


What Went Wrong?

by InterNutter



Series: Dibbles [1]
Category: Church (Short Film 2019)
Genre: F/M, Horrible Institutional Environment, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Isolation, Language Barrier, Mutual Pining, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-04-24 06:52:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19168033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterNutter/pseuds/InterNutter
Summary: My take on the whole Animatic's story with LOADS of extra material behind the scenes we saw. I have a knack for getting at least three chapters out of a two-frame dissolve so this thing is going to be LONG. Be warned. Indie novel author can't shut off the verbiage flow.This fic largely written before I saw Toasty's feature script, so this entire thing is not cannon-compliant. Let's call it the 'Assumptions AU' in case I make sequels.[pondering a followup fic to this one. Also pondering a rewrite fixer so I AM cannon compliant. Y'all can help me make up my mind if you like :D ]





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Toastyhat/EmptyFeet made the animatic. Fall Out Boy made the music. I do very strange things with words and here we are.

It was easy to hate the furless flat-faces. They’d taken him from his home. They’d hurt his family. His last sight of home had been of his bleeding mother, his last words from her had been her screaming his name. Then a sharp pain and light blotted out the rest of that evening.

The next thing he knew, he was surrounded by them. He didn’t know their words, they didn’t speak his. He trusted them, at first, as they herded him from one chamber to another. That was a mistake that Ashivon would learn to regret.

His arm hurt from the strange, red brand their hands had put on there. His stomach ached with hunger. The floor of this room was cold, as were the stones of the corner he huddled in.

The wall opposite the door was all bars. They were far enough apart that Ashivon thought he could wriggle through. He’d tried, just once, before dawn began to colour in the sky. He learned that to touch the bars was to feel a stinging, jangling pain through his whole body. So now he huddled in a corner, far away from the bars, as far from the door as he could go, and wept.

His teeth were chattering by the time the sun crept in beyond the bars. He craved warmth of any kind, but feared the bars. The door was more of a threat. It could swing open at any moment and bring him more pain, more cruelty from the furless. Shaking and frightened, Ashivon crept towards the sunshine. He could, with some caution, get within a hands’  breadth of the bars. They made his fur stick up and feel weird, but it didn’t sting, and the sunshine was warm enough for this to be a fair exchange. Nevertheless, he still trembled. Nevertheless, his teeth still rattled against each other.

Birds came to peck at the stones in the courtyard. So. There were birds in this awful realm. Past them were lines of… statues? Wooden figures of torsos and heads on sticks. No arms or legs to speak of. They had circles within circles on them. Red and white.

The birds took wing, and Ashivon could understand why. More of the furless! He got as far away from them as he could whilst staying in the sunshine, curling up on himself in a huddle. Perhaps, if he were small enough, they wouldn’t see him. They wouldn’t hurt him.

There was a big one, like the others who had put the burning mark on his arm, and maybe a dozen small ones. All the littler ones were dressed the same. Simple, loose, long dresses that reached past their knees. They had funny things on their feet just like the grown ones.

Ashivon had briefly thought their feet were toeless and strange, but… he could see now that they had clothes for their feet. Just like some of them had clothes for their heads. He stared at them, big one tugging along the little ones on some kind of tether, and waited to see if he had to go without the sunshine.

* * *

“Keep a tight grip on your knot, children,” instructed Teacher Aies. “So long as I can pull you away from danger, you will stay safe. Today… you are going to see our new Tormentor.”

Half the children in the class started shrieking. Sanga had heard whispers that the Capital’s Tormentor had died. It was a scary old beast that gave many children in the Church’s orphanage nightmares. When she had watched the Tests of Fate each Sabaday, he scared her, too. So big. And those horns on his head. Big and heavy-looking. The old Tormentor could claw open a criminal from waist to jawline as soon as look at them. Sanga almost cried to think of a new one.

First, they had a special speaker, Trainer Vaas. He spoke in a voice so soft that Sanga, trailing at the end of Teacher Aies’ left-hand rope, strained to hear. He spoke of all the things it was dangerous to do near a Tormentor. Especially the things that were most dangerous to do with a  _ new _ and  _ untrained _ Tormentor.

Do not look into its eyes. Do not make loud noises. Do not make sudden moves. Do not go near the bars. Do not touch the bars. And especially,  _ especially, _ never, ever,  _ never _ give it food.

Sanga’s grip on her knot was so tight that her knuckles were white. She trusted Teacher Aies and Trainer Vaas. She did not trust her ability to keep her water as they entered the training courtyard, where the half-grown, young acolytes practiced their drills and developed their skills. Where the Tormentor cage was, so that all who trained there could see the face of evil, and thereby know what they were fighting.

The old Tormentor was seven feet tall or more. A big mountain of ashy grey and black fur, wrapped tightly around enough muscle to strangle a bear. Sanga half expected the new one to be bigger. Which was why she almost didn’t see it.

“This one is very wild,” said Teacher Aies, leading them closer to the cage. “Listen. It’s clicking its teeth in a desire for blood.”

Sanga could hear it. A rapid beat without rhythm, but relentless. She followed the sound to the source. “It’s so small,” she breathed. Curled up like a kitten, it was smaller than her, and  _ she _ was the runt of her class.

Its fur was black and grey, like the old Tormentor, but this grey was a grey like a mouse. Its horns barely peeked out of a wild mop of black hair.

_ She looked into its eyes! _

They were not human eyes. The bits that were supposed to be white were red - blood red! And the bits that were supposed to be black were yellow like the glow of the kitchen fires. In between was a burning orange  _ like the pits of the hells you were doomed to by that hungry gaze… _

Sanga shut her eyes, concentrating on the knot in her hands, on the prayers of salvation, on keeping her bladder from leaking…

Which was exactly the moment that Dridl, the ass, decided to push her towards the bars and sweep her feet backwards at the same time. He yelled, “Kiss the demon!” as he did so. The class usually laughed at Dridl’s antics. Not this time. They gasped. Someone shrieked, but briefly, covering their mouth with their hands.

Sanga hit one of the bars and something painful shot every inch of her through with stinging pain. Worse than the worst-ever pins and needles she had ever had. Sanga held her breath so she wouldn’t scream and  _ pushed _ at the pain, rolling like she’d seen some of the acolytes do.

Of all the things she did, she was most proud of avoiding wetting herself.

All she could see of the demon were glowing eyes in the deepest shadows. She looked away, scrambling up onto her feet and running for the safety of Teacher Aies’ skirts.

Teacher Aies bent her ear and chided her for being such a temptation to other students. She must learn to speak when answering a question, never state the obvious, and obey instructions. She was lucky, Teacher Aies said, that the Tormentor hadn’t decided to eat her whole arm while she had it through the bars like an unthinking draybeast.

The rest of the class laughed at her as she marched back to grip her knot. Her face burned and she had to work to stop her eyes leaking.

She didn’t hear what Trainer Vaas was saying over the hushed titters of her classmates. Whatever it was, Teacher Aies seemed happy about it before she lead them all back into the classroom to talk about the Holy Powers and how they kept just one Tormentor at a time to punish the sinful. Of how they had to transport their sinful to the neighbouring townships of Rhyspel, Janko, and Vardel so that  _ their _ tormentors could Test them.

The Capital’s Tormentor would not be ready for the arena for five years at the least, Teacher Aies said. Five whole years with only the worst of the worst being beheaded by a Purifier for the cheering crowds.


	2. Chapter 2

Ashivon remained in the corner where he had started, watching the shadows crawl up over the buildings. The burn on his arm was fading to an ache, but the pain of an empty belly was starting to overwhelm his mind. Did they mean to starve him? If so, why did they have an Elder in with their piles of bodies?

It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense.

Two grown ones happened to appear in the courtyard. The same rolled-up sleeves and white gloves of the ones who had put the mark on him. Ashivon curled up tighter, fearing what they would do. One had a long stick. One had a covered pot with a handle.

He watched in fear as one held the pot at the square hole in the bars, and the other used the long stick to place it in the room with him. Another movement, and the lid came off and out of the bars.

Ashivon could smell stew. His mouth watered and his stomach snarled at him, yeet he dared not move.

_ “Eat,” _ said the one who had the stick.

He didn’t understand the word. Ashivon swallowed drool, flinched towards the stewpot, but he stared at the stick, It was certainly long enough to hit him if he made a move towards the food.

_ “He’snoteating. Heshouldbestarving.” _

_ “It’sthesticksir. Anybeastfearsabeating.” _

The one with the stick journeyed out of Ashivon’s sight and returned without it.  _ “Eat,” _ he repeated.

Ashivon watched them as he crept towards the pot, ready to spring back into the corner if the furless made the slightest twitch. They didn’t. The one with the white gloves simply kept repeating that one, alien word.

The stew smelled  _ wonderful. _

The other one whispered,  _ “Fivesunsaysiteatsitselfsick,” _

Ashivon flinched. The furless made no further moves. He risked snatching out a gobbet. It was warm and so delicious. He could not watch the furless once he’d had a taste of the stew. He ate with both hands. Crammed his mouth full. Chewed urgently. Swallowed as much as he could as soon as he could. There were no utensils and there was no table.

His mother would have howled about how uncivilised this was. Eating with his hands out of a bowl on the floor. Like an animal. It could only be worse if he stuck his head into the bowl and ate from it directly.

He ate until his stomach almost rebelled from being too full, and he still licked the gravy from his hands. Or he did until cold water dashed over him and the stick invaded the room to drag the empty pot out again.

In three days, Ashivon would learn about the burning light that these furless used.

 

* * *

 

Sanga didn’t make a sound as the needles went into her flesh. One worked on her left arm. One worked on the skin at her breastbone, and a third worked on her right wrist. The one on her chest was the symbol of the Church. Her wrists would have the twin bands of a Healer. She knew she was young to be Chosen for a path, here in the Capital’s sacred halls, but Trainer Vaas had plucked her out of class for this.

He said she had done her utmost to obey instructions despite the wrong that had happened. That meant that she was prime material. Healers, he had said, could never start training too early. Channeling the Divine was always an arduous task. Training in its use was a long path full of effort.

She was going to help the whole world, Trainer Vaas said. She would be part of the greater machinery of the Church. Saving the ailing, healing the wounded, providing comfort and guidance to the lost… He said she would be one of the most important members of the Church. The needles moved up her outer arms. Linking one circle to the next.

She wasn’t just a Healer. Not any more. She could feel the tattoos forming. The ones for Defenders.

They expected her to fight as well as heal?

Another Trainer appeared in her periphery. A woman with similar markings, but the white gloves of a Trainer were absent. She had the headscarf of a Nun, and rolled-up sleeves of a worker, but the neat, close clothes of a Defender. She measured Sanga with a stick, and looked at some papers held by an acolyte.

“Undersized,” she said. She peered at the papers and added. “Child of the basket.” She tutted. “Some would argue the corruption of your birth will curse you… I would argue that few enough are capable, we need every hand, regardless of its legitimacy.”

The one working on her chest placed a plaster on her mark. There would be bandages to keep it in place once she could move her arms. Once the tattoos were finished, they would be bound first.

The unfamiliar Trainer spoke to Sanga for the first time. “Trainer Vaas tells me you obeyed every caution with the new Tormentor, even when some things were out of your control.”

Sanga nodded.

“Teacher Aies tells me that you are a disruptive girl. Always providing temptation for others to cause upset. You are barely acceptable with your letters, hardly worth applaud with your numbers… and middle of the road with your chatechisms and recitations.”

Teacher Aies knew everything. Sanga nodded.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “You can move, you can listen, you can obey. These are always wanted qualities in the Church. I am Trainer Yeitch, and you will come to me every day for your trainings and tasks.”

Sanga nodded again. Trainer Yeitch stepped a pace away from the tattoo work in progress and watched it for a while. Sanga concentrated on measured breathing and staying very, very still so that the people working could be done all the quicker.

“She hasn’t made a sound through the entire thing?” asked Trainer Yeitch.

“Not a peep,” said the chief tattooist, Brander Gaiin. “That’s some discipline for six.”

They finished with her right arm, applying salve and wrapping it in clean gauze. Sanga let their hands move her around as they applied their bandages to her body. Figure eights around her shoulders, keeping the plaster on her chest. They soon finished her left arm, and bound that too.

Attendants wrapped Sanga up in a soft robe, and one gave her a sour potion that made her drowsy. Trainer Yeitch took her hand and pulled her along. Away from the orphanage dorms. Away from the halls she already knew. All the way to a small stone room with just enough room for a bed and a hunchbacked study desk. There was a hook embedded in the wall, but it was empty of any clothes. The only other facilities were in the form of a chamber pot under the bed.

Trainer Yeitch tucked her in. Used some of the Divine Light to help her sleep.

In three days, Sanga would start training with the older Acolytes.


	3. Chapter 3

Ashivon was learning. He had learned what the cover in the other corner hid. It hid a latrine. He could not call it a privy because nothing in this cage was private. It was little more than a hole to a deeper pipe, just wide enough to accept his dirt and his water, and narrowing to thinner than his arm, soon after. The cover held the foul stench in, and its edges stank of the Elder’s inaccuracy.

Water came in a bucket through the bars, once a day. If he spilled it or tipped it out -say- in an attempt to clean the latrine a little, then he would get no more until the next evening. Food arrived at the same time, with a word. Their word.

_ Eat. _

They would not hurt him when the food came, so this evening, he walked to where the pot would descend, crouched and ready. Stomach snarling for the warmth of the stew and his mouth eager to chew the thick, juicy gobbets within. He thought to help them by taking up the lid for the pot, and sort of bowling it out between the bars. Perhaps they would be more civil if he was kind for them.

That was a mistake.

Seconds after he laid his hand on the lid, something white flashed in his vision and a searing pain burned his whole head like fire. Worse than fire. Lightning, perhaps. He had never felt it, but he remembered an Elder who had been struck, telling the tale.  _ Little ones, you would count yourself lucky to survive it, it burns so badly, _ she had said.  _ It is fire and worse than fire. It burns all your insides as well as your outsides. For three weeks, I stank like cooked meat, and I still shake in my left leg… _

Ashivon half expected his face to be shaking like Elder Rethinek’s leg. He touched where it hurt still, in sizzling agony, but found no wound, just a tender place.

“Why?” he asked. “It is food. I was helping.”

If they understood his words, they gave no sign. The one with the white gloves stood watching, and the other one had… a white stick that glowed with its own light. That one’s markings were also glowing around their wrists and on their chest.

Ashivon knew what a stick meant in the hands of the furless. He scurried back to his corner and made himself small. Tail curled around his legs and arms, as if that could do any good.

The other stick, the normal one, moved, and removed the lid. The steaming, welcome scent of fresh stew tormented Ashivon, and his stomach roared with want. It had been all day! What did they want? Did they want him to creep on all fours?

He swallowed drool and tried it. Hand forward. Foot forward. Closer to the steaming bowl and the promise of a full belly. Hand forward. Foot forward. Hand forward…

The one with the glowing stick moved. No longer standing idle, but… poised. Ready to strike. Those dark eyes measuring distances. Those limbs adjusting themselves to ready a blow.

Ashivon paused, one foot in the air. What did they  _ want? _ He put his dangling foot down, watching for the slightest twitch. Lifted a hand slowly -so slowly- to reach for the food.

CRAK!

He yelped and leaped out of their reach. He didn’t understand. They had put the food down. It was time to eat it. He was hungry. Could they hear it or were they deaf like old Kyrash, who spoke with his hands? Did they want him to speak with his hands?

He tried it. Signing,  _ Over here, _ to get their attention and then,  _ Food time, yes? _ But his signs were ignored. The emptiness inside him almost bent him double with the pain of it. The food was  _ right there… _ Ashivon smacked his lips and swallowed more drool. Would it matter if he stood?

He stood. The one with the glowing stick didn’t react. Okay. They didn’t care if he walked or crawled. Good. One step. Two steps. Ashivon edged closer to the stewpot. Just as he got within reach of the glowing stick, the one who held it changed position. That was a warning.

He could think his way around this for sure. They wanted him alive, the dead Elder in the halls should have been proof. The regular food was also proof. They gave him water. They gave him food. He had a latrine. They meant to keep him here. So. There had to be something else.

Ashivon took a step to his left, watching the one with the glowing stick. That one mirrored him, always ready to strike if Ashivon stepped closer. The one with the white gloves stood still. Watching. He looked like a market-man weighing up a goose with his eyes.

Of course. That was what was missing. The  _ word! _ The word had not been said, and the one with the white gloves was not talking. Ashivon moved so that the square hole in the bars framed them. He had learned not to look them in their eyes. They did not like that. They could fling their light, sometimes. Throw it in little darts that stung like spitting fat. Ashivon watched the white-gloved one’s mouth. They did not seem inclined to speak.

He remembered the sound of the word. Dare he try it? He was out of range of the glowing stick, but he would never be out of range of the burning darts. His stomach bit him again, roaring. Well. Sooner or later, they would hurt him. Ashivon decided to take the chance with the darts.

“Eeet,” he said.

The small patches of fur above the furless’ corpse-like eyes raised. The one with the white gloves tilted their head a little.

“Eeet,” said Ashivon, and dared to put a foot towards the pot.

The one with the glowing stick was there, readying a blow. Ashivon took two steps back and hunkered there. Watching the pot. Watching the one with the white gloves. Listening to the overwhelming roar of his empty belly. Wishing he could work out what they wanted.

He growled, himself, the next time his stomach bit him. Hating the one with the white gloves. Hating the one with the glowing stick. The mark on his arm… pulsed… like a heartbeat. Shone a little in the half-light of sunset.

_ “Eat,” _ said the one with the white gloves.

Ashivon sprang towards the pot, cramming his mouth and swallowing before he could finish chewing properly. He almost choked so many times, but he ate anyway. He did not trust the furless. He would never trust the furless.

He was so busy watching the one in the white gloves and the one with the glowing stick that he didn’t see or hear the four furless coming in by the only door. His focus was on the single, gloved hand, held up palm out, fingers together. That is, when his focus wasn’t on the next handful of thick stew, or licking the gravy off his hands.

Ashivon gorged himself to creaking, until it was a fight to take in the next mouthful. Until it was a struggle to even lick the gravy from his hands.

The white glove moved with the hand inside it. Folding over two fingers and a thumb.

The shadows warned Ashivon, as did the eyes of the one in white gloves. A flinch, a second, and the glowing white blow only singed, rather than burned. There were four of them in a square. Bare-handed. Simple trews and tops. Similar symbols on their chest. Similar glowing bands on their wrists.

All aiming to hurt him.

Ashivon dodged and tried to escape them, yet they managed to get the better of him every time. A sting here, a scorch there. One flicked a weapon of light - a whip - at his tail and it was a close thing for them to avoid his claws and teeth in their arm.

They were fast, but even weighed down with food, he was faster. If he could just get close to one, he could see if they had blood like he did.  _ The bodies in the halls had blood, did it only come out when they were dead? They looked like corpses anyway… _

Blows rained down on him. Entangling whips restrained him. One connected with the side of his head and he knew no more.

His training had begun.

 

* * *

  
“You must not scratch,” said Trainer Yeitch as she hung up a fresh set of clothes on the hook and set a bowl of gruel on the small desk. “Eat as quickly as is proper, Sanga. Training begins at Second Bell.”

The first one sounded, and Sanga almost leaped to run for the orphanage food hall. Except… she had no idea where that was from here. She’d got turned around since the tattoo chamber. She didn’t know where anything was.

Sanga shuffled out of the bed and sat at the table. “Thank you, Trainer Yeitch,” she intoned.

“Why did you not make a noise as you were marked?” she asked.

Sanga had to swallow a mouthful of hot gruel. It was hotter and thicker than the stuff she usually got. “Women are worthy of silence, said Saint Handrei. Fortitude in the face of pain is a virtue.”

Trainer Yeitch nodded. “It is also a virtue to express pain, and seek help when it is clearly needed.”

Sanga swallowed again. “There were people helping. They were making me better. So I didn’t cry out.”  _ Besides, _ she added inside her head,  _ they weren’t doing anything worse than what Dridl, the ass, did daily. At least when they were done, they finished. _

“Interesting,” said Trainer Yeitch.

Following the emptying of the gruel bowl, Trainer Yeitch lead her out into the courtyard with the older acolytes. Each one of them could make four of Sanga, but her concern was with the cage wall on the far side from the smaller steeple, and the distinct twin red spots in the shadows. Sanga scurried around to keep Trainer Yeitch between herself and those horrible bars and the worse occupant.

“You fear the Tormentor,” said Trainer Yeitch.

Sanga could only nod. Did those red, soul-stealing eyes have a range? Could they steal a soul when one could barely pick them out of the darkness? She could see its mouse-grey body and some of its baggy pants. The face was in shadow, yet the eyes glowed anyway.

“You’re a wise child, Sanga. It is smart to fear the Tormentor. It is a dangerous beast. In a year, perhaps two, it will hurt one of these boys. Three? And it will kill one. Always keep your distance from a Tormentor. Always.”

There was another trainer leading the acolytes. A big man with arms and legs like tree trunks. They strained at his shirtsleeves and trews. “CLASS,” he barked. “What is the safe distance from a Tormentor?”

“Sir! At the other end of a lightstaff, sir!” They all barked back.

“Sanga, this is Trainer Braak,” said Trainer Yeitch. “You will be learning the fighting forms from him.”

Trainer Braak appeared to notice them for the first time. “Aaw… a baby Boundary.” His class mumbled at each other as Trainer Braak walked over to Sanga and dropped to a crouch. His hand was bigger than Sanga’s entire face. “You,” he said, “will be all that stands between the Church and a descent into ruin.”

Wait. What? Sanga said, “I beg your pardon, sir?”

“You will be brave,” he said. “You will be strong. But most importantly, you will be keeping the Tormentor fit for its duty in punishing the sinful.”

All the acolytes had the bands and bars of Defenders. They were going to be soldiers of the church. There were always Defenders keeping the Tormentor in line. “I dunno what a Barrier is,” she said. “Trainer Vaas said I was gonna be a healer.”

“You are,” said Trainer Braak. “You’re going to be the  _ Tormentor’s _ healer.”

The gruel she ate earlier threatened to come back up.

Trainer Braak found this funny. “I will make you brave later. Now? I make you strong. You follow the stances of my class. I and Trainer Yeitch will correct you. You will exercise. You will obey.” He stood back up and got back to the centre of the line. “From the beginning! Let’s show the baby how we behave! One!”

The class sprang into a stance. So did Trainer Braak. So did Trainer Yeitch. Sanga did her best to copy them, and felt Trainer Yeitch’s walking stick moving bits of Sanga a few important degrees this way or that.

“TWO!”

The rest of the class said, “HUA!” and moved their arms. Sanga did not. Again, the stick moved her about.

“THREE!”

“HUA!”

Sanga could barely squeak out a ‘hua’ with the rest. She sounded exactly like a child emulating the grownups. She was getting everything wrong.

Her training had begun.


	4. Chapter 4

There were words, enforced by the white light. Things they wanted him to do. Eat. Sit. Stand. Hands, he was learning, meant to put his hands behind his back, together, so they could bind them. The bonds irritated him, but they didn’t burn like the rest of their light. Once bound, they would haul him around from place to place.

There was always one furless with a glowing stick, poised and ready to strike if he did anything amiss.

Ashivon growled at them on principal. A steady, low rumble that showed his teeth at them. They were wary of him, and he knew it. Good. Still, he had also learned that more of them could beat him down if they wished it.

Today, they were cropping his hair. A process that involved four furless with sticks and one with a pair of shears, and another with a bowl that the cut hair went into. Always, the ones touching him and holding him did so with gloved hands.

Was he poisonous to them? Was he toxic? If that meant the one who burned the red diamond into his arm spent a day or more sick, or had died, then Ashivon was glad. One less furless to torment him or any like him.

“Sit,” commanded one who wore gloves.

It was less trouble and pain to do what they said. Ashivon crouched in the circle where they had him and watched as the circle and the symbol within it glowed. He was getting used to this, and didn’t try to bolt. The circle held in its light invisible fire and lightning for him, and him alone.

This time, it was one of the curved ones, with funny bulging chests, who wore the gloves and held the shears.

_ “Bythesaint, thatthinggrowsfast.” _

Quaking behind that one was one of the little ones. The exact little one that had been tripped into the bars of his cage. Dark hair. Thick, dark patches of fur above dark eyes. It looked close to tears, and had bandages on its chest and wrists.

Ashivon could smell blood. Fresh blood and moist scabs. The red mark on his arm pulsed and made him feel hungry. Hungrier. Angrier. He had no hate for this little one, it was already scared.

Someone cracked him over the head with lightning. “NO!” That was also a familiar word. It meant he was in error. That he’d done something they didn’t like. “No eat!”

_ “Sanga, backaway,” _ said the one with the shears.  _ “Itcansmellblood.” _

The little one took two paces backwards. Two more came to stand between it and him, wrists glowing, sticks glowing, ready to strike.

“No eat,” Ashivon repeated, though his stomach snarled for food.

_ “Whenwasthisthingfed?” _ demanded the one with the shears.  _ “It’sthreateningmyprentice.” _

Ashivon flexed in his bonds. This position was uncomfortable. The bonds were hot. He wished they would hurry up and get this over with. His hair was in his eyes and the scent of blood was doing things that were unwelcome to him.

The one with the shears pointed to the little one and said,  _ “Child,” _ over and over. Little ones were called  _ Child. _

Ashivon tried the alien word. “T’shyld.” He tried again. “Child.”

“No. Eat. Child,” said the one with the shears.

“No... eat... child,” Ashivon agreed haltingly. He fretted at his bonds. Were they going to shear him or beat him? What was taking them so long?

Pattering feet heralded a furless with a trencher, on which was a cut of meat that had been hurriedly blessed by fire. It made the mark pulse and the hunger swell. Ashivon followed its path with his eyes. This, he guessed, he might be allowed to eat.

One placed it down, another shoved it towards him with a long stick. Ashivon didn’t care that his wrists were bound and he was bound and therefore couldn’t pick up his food. He just bent over and bit. Yes. Oh, absent, deaf gods, yes. This was what he needed. He needed it more than love, more than water, more than  _ air. _

He didn’t even notice the slip and slide of the shears as the furless took handfuls of hair off him. He was too busy chewing. In spite of his overall mood, a purr struck up inside him as he ate. This was  _ good. _ Unfortunately, like all good things, it was gone too soon.

The little one was shaking, scurrying from the room behind the large one that no longer had the shears. His head was cooler. They had taken his hair. Furless with buckets doused him over with water and furless wearing gloves hauled him up and back to his cell.

There was no more smell of blood. The mark no longer throbbed.

He had just eaten  _ undercooked meat! _

Like an  _ animal _ would.

Disgusting.

What had that mark done to him? What had the furless done to him? What were they turning him into?

 

* * *

 

Sanga tried to hold the bowl with as little of herself as she could manage. It had come from the Tormentor. From the  _ demon. _ It was from a being that was made to sin. Therefore, to Sanga’s mind, it was made  _ of _ sin.

She was carrying sin in a bowl and she didn’t even have gloves on to protect her. She tread carefully as Trainer Yeitch lead the way. Trying not to think about how close she was to actual sin. How close she had been to that terrifying beast.

It had instantly focussed on the meat, when it came. Meat was an avenue for sin, because getting it required killing. Sanga had seen it smack its chops and drool at the sight of it. Then seen it fall on the meat like a starving dog. It hadn’t even noticed Trainer Yeitch shearing off hunks of its hair, it was so focussed on gorging itself.

Pride, wrath, sloth, gluttony, envy, lust and greed. That beast was made of them.

Wrath, certainly. There wasn’t a moment when it wasn’t snarling or growling at someone. Gluttony was evident in the way it gulped down that meat, and greed in the way it desperately lapped at the empty trencher. She’d seen it in the mornings, during training, lying down in the sunshine, turning over on occasion, so that covered sloth. That was four of the seven.

Of the remaining three, Sanga feared lust the most.

She would never, ever touch the demon or anything that came from it if she could help it. She knew it could infect her with its evil. That had to be why Trainers wore gloves.

Trainer Yeitch lead her into a vast room where people wore cloth over their noses and mouths as well as over their heads. They had oiled leather on their bodies. Gloves. Aprons. Pants. Boots. The entire place stank. It stank of vinegar. It stank of sulphur. It stank of hell. Tears sprang up and Sanga dared not move for fear of tipping something up, tripping up, or otherwise becoming contaminated or contaminating something.

Gloved hands gripped her arm and Sanga trusted their pull. Making little tiny steps so she wouldn’t stumble. Hands wrapped her face up in something that smelled of lavender and honey. It was an immediate relief, as was the kind hand with the kerchief.

There was a physician with a bird mask on, handling the hairs with tweezers. “An excellent yield. Excellent. The prentice can put them in the jar.”

There was a pyg jar with a metal hinge and lock for its lid. There were letters on the side that spelled  _ DEMON HAIR _ in big, round letters.

There were no tools.

“It’s safe,” cooed Trainer Yeitch. “Separated from the host, it is no longer alive. You cannot get invested with further sin.”

Sanga trembled as she pinched up a chunk of deep black hair. It felt thick, like a horse’s mane. Soft, but not scratchy like horsehair. The jar was empty of the old Tormentor’s hair. Sanga idly wondered what it had felt like. This stuff was an inch and a half long, and required pushing in past the mouth of the jar. Sanga concentrated on her task, almost not noticing when someone in a face wrap moved in on the bowl with a special tool.

“Hey,” complained Sanga.

“Need these,” said the one in the face wrap. They slotted some pitch black hairs into a small, tube-shaped vial. They turned and called, “HEY, THEY GOT MORE DEMON HAIR!”

Sanga shrieked as a swarm clustered around the bowl, special tweezers dipping into the bowl like hungry birds at a bread roll. Some went into vials. Some went into folded paper. She stuttered, “It’s… s’posed’a go in the jar…” She was sure she’d get into trouble for this, and started to cry. “...it’s supposed to go in the jar…”

One of them hugged her as they moved out of the swarm with their folded paper sample of demon hair. “You’re doing great, kid. Cheer up.”

As if that could do anything to stop the flow of water from her eyes. “...i need t’ put it inna jar…” Sanga was too scared of the pecking tweezers to try and pinch hanks of hair out of the bowl. In fact, she shrieked again when hands plucked her off the stool she had perched on to do her work.

It was Trainer Yeitch. “Let the starving eat,” she said. “I forgot the old Tormentor’s hair was getting thin. This lot are in a frenzy to make potions with that. Let’s let them go.” Her hug was warm and soothed the upset out of Sanga’s heart. When the tears stopped blurring her eyes, they were in the kitchen, and Trainer Yeitch was fetching something large, gooey, and full of cream from the shelves.

Sanga had never seen anything like it. It looked like something special, and it felt like a sin when Trainer Yeitch pressed it into Sanga’s hands. “Go,” she said. “Take some time in the sunshine and have something sweet. You’ve had enough sour in today.”

She found her way into the courtyard with the dummies and the demon. The Tormentor. Sanga found a patch of dappled shade under a fruiting tree and ate the special pastry. It tasted  _ so _ nice, she worried someone would cut her hands off for having it. So she watched every entrance to the courtyard as she nibbled on the double handful of forbidden food.

Sanga was a ‘child of the basket’ an unwanted baby left in a nun’s or a priest’s arms or placed in a basket by a thoroughfare and left to wait for the first sympathetic soul to hear the infant’s complaining wails. She had been told, hundreds of times or more, that she was born from sin and would end in sin. She was told that she was flawed. She was told that her mother was a whore or worse. In the middle of all that, Sanga had come to believe that she didn’t deserve anything nice.

She’d reduced the double handful of special fare to one when a distant pair of figures entered the courtyard. One walking tall, and pushing a basket chair in which the other one sat.

Sanga, fearing capture, nibbled faster. Stuffing bites into her cheeks so she could bite off more. She had to hold the last bite in with her hands and breathe carefully as she chewed. Fortunately, the chair and its occupant were more interested in the cage and the Tormentor inside it. They spent enough time there for Sanga to successfully swallow everything in her mouth  _ and _ wash her hands in the fountain.

By the time that was done, the basket chair and the one pushing it were headed over to Sanga.

She hurried to find a proper spot in the sun and stand there at attention. Waiting for inspection. Waiting for judgement.

The one pushing the basket was none other that Trainer Yeitch. The old woman in the basket was a mystery to Sanga. Nevertheless, she waited.

“This is Barrier Denassa. She trained me in the proper ways of becoming a Barrier.”

“I’m going to teach  _ you _ all of the secrets,” she said. “All the things they don’t write down.”

Sanga looked from Barrier Denassa to Trainer Yeitch, who said, “I was trained by the rule of the books. The secrets are for those who will be working  _ closely _ with a Tormentor.”

“A Barrier must have the promise of living the same lifespan as the Tormentor,” said Barrier Denassa. “I had to train up Yeitch when I reached my fiftieth year. Just in case.”

Truth. Sanga had barely heard of women who lived much past sixty. Whispers amongst some children said the most ancient person in the world was  _ seventy-four. _ That was  _ ancient. _ This implied that the old Tormentor was also ancient.

Trainer Yeitch left them. Sanga standing and waiting, and Barrier Denassa in her basket. Wickerwork bound them together. Sanga had her start in a basket. Barrier Denassa may well end in one.

“You have a name, child?”

Sanga nodded, then realised that Barrier Denassa may want to know it. “I’m Sanga.”

“Sanga,” she repeated. “Good. A short name. He might even be able to say it. Old Hratsek could only call me D’nass. The rest was too complicated for his tongue.” She turned her faded eyes to the apple tree. “Does that have ripe fruit in it?”

Lost, Sanga looked. There were circles of red visible in the sculpted branches. “Yes’m.”

“Well, push me over there, then. Let’s get some ripe apples.”

Sanga did her best. She was small, and Barrier Denassa was surprisingly heavy for such a skinny old woman. Nevertheless, once the wheels started turning, it got easier.

“Good girl. Now up there and throw the good apples down. I’ll catch them all, you’ll see.”

Obedience was the cornerstone of faith, so Sanga obeyed. She’d never climbed a tree, but Trainer Braak had her shinning up poles, so this wasn’t much different. It was even easier without the weights on her wrists and ankles. Once safely up, she let the apples fall towards Barrier Denassa. She did catch them all, just as she had said. She made a sort of basket out of her fingers and hands and scooped them out of the air. When there were no more, she slid back down.

“Back over to the cage, now,” ordered Barrier Denassa. “Close as you dare.”

Sanga swallowed her fears and did as she was told. The wheeled basket was long and, as long as it was between her and the bars, Sanga was happy to push.

The bars did nothing to the basket when its iron frame clanged into them. They didn’t even light up. Barrier Denassa found this funny. “Around to me,” she cackled. “Come, child. He’s more afraid of us than we are of him.”

Sanga peered out at the Tormentor from behind the basket.

“Come, come, child. I’m old and I only have so much breath to spare.”

“Child,” repeated the dark shape in the shadows, the dark shape with glowing red eyes. “No eat child.”

It sounded… it sounded like a promise. But… demons  _ lied. _

“Interesting,” said Barrier Denassa. She held out an apple for her. “Take a bite.”

Even though her stomach was full of cream-filled, fruity pastry, Sanga obeyed. It was sweet and tart and good.

“They can have more than meat,” said Barrier Denassa. She lobbed an apple in past the bars. “Eat!”

Sanga continued to work on her apple as she watched the dark shape of the Tormentor stalk the apple and sniff at it. The beast picked it up. Sniffing, then took a tentative nibble. One chew. Two, three, four… and then - SNAP, SNAP, SNAP, SNAP! The rest of the fruit was gobbled down and no trace of it remained.

“They’re always hungry,” said Barrier Denassa as she handed over another apple. “You bowl him this one and say the word.”

Sanga let the apple roll along the stones and said, “Eat.”

The beast fell on it. SNAP SNAP SNAP SNAP! Then it was licking its hands for any spare traces of juice.

“It’s easier at dawn,” said Barrier Denassa. “They like sweet things, just like us. You creep by his cage and give him a sweet thing every dawn, he will stop being scared of you. That, and make sure he has two buckets of water. They like to wash.”

Sanga raised her hand.

“This isn’t a classroom, child,” she said.

“No eat child,” said the Tormentor. It was like a talking bird that responded to certain words. It was hunkered on the stone and its red gaze was fixed on the apples in Barrier Denassa’s basket.

“Good boy,” the old woman cooed, tossing an apple through the bars. “Eat.”

SNAP, SNAP, SNAP, SNAP!

“You had a question?”

Sanga lowered her hand. “Why do you call it a ‘he’?”

“He is a he,” she said. “They’re always male. Never female. Now. Take us away from here, before his trainers come catch us.”

Sanga was all in favour of not getting caught.

 


	5. Chapter 5

The sun was getting low. Ashivon used the last of the water bucket to wash. Hands. Face. Hair. Well, the short stubble of hair that was left after the shears had done their work.

The old one and the little one were… kind. They didn’t hurt him like the other furless did. They didn’t free him, either, but they did feed him without pain. That was good.

He couldn’t trust them. They were _furless._ All the furless in this place were going to hurt him. All the furless had taken him from everything he knew. The furless had put him in this cage. The furless used the light to restrain him, harm him. The furless had put the mark on his arm that made him crave the disgusting and made him angry.

He had every reason to hate them all… but he would not hate the obviously helpless. They didn’t have the strength to hurt him.

The ones with the food came, and the smell from within the pot made his mark pulse. He knew it contained undercooked meat. The scent of blood made his stomach and his heart rage. He stood, just out of their reach, watching as the pot came through. Growling and wishing he could sink his teeth and claws into their flesh. Rip them apart and drink their blood.

“Sit,” commanded the one with gloves.

Ashivon dropped into a crouch, tail twitching. One ear flicked back, trying to listen for the door behind him. Watching the glowing stick in the hands of the one without gloves. He sidled a little around the pot, waiting.

“Eat,” said the one with gloves.

Ashivon did not leave his back to the door, this time. He dug into the pot. Cooked vegetables, rarer meat than he was used to. When the shadows moved by the door, he was ready. They were not. He sprang at the first one through the door, clawing at the mark that made the glowing stick.

It burned!

He clawed at the arm after one touch, leaning in to bite at their shoulder. The one _behind_ that one bought their glowing stick down between Ashivon’s horns. Burning whips pulled him away from the door. The one with the wound retreated, but four came through anyway.

Blows rained down on him until he could no longer even struggle to get up again. The burning stopped. The pain did not.

 

* * *

 

Sanga had been preparing for bed when Trainer Yeitch fetched her back out of her cell. “You are learning, tonight,” she said. “Do not attempt to try anything you see, or you could rupture your marks. Follow.”

Sanga shuffled her shoes back on and crammed on her wimple, then went dashing after Trainer Yeitch’ skirts.

Their first stop was a young man in the hospice that Sanga recognised from Defender drills. He was one of the few that Trainer Braak called ‘sloppy’ and ‘lazy’. His left arm was cut in four parallel lines from shoulder to wrist tattoo. There was a shorter set of marks running down his upper arm.

_She had been training for the better part of a year…_

The special tattoos took a long time to heal. They bled randomly, and the salve made them burn and itch. Sanga was doing her best not to scratch, but some days were agony.

“Watch,” said Trainer Yeitch. “Do not follow.”

She could feel the singing of the Divine inside her. Trainer Yeitch took off her gloves and crossed her hands. Middle finger of one touching the pinkie of the other, and vice versa. Her hands and her marks lit and the Divine reached Sanga’s very bones.

Trainer Yeitch moved her hands apart and the light flew into the cuts. Closing them up from the edges to the middle. In a moment, the light and the song was gone, and there was no trace of injury any more.

Sanga couldn’t help thinking, _Two more years, and he could die…_

“Bless you, sister,” the young man breathed.

“Be less stupid, next time.” Trainer Yeitch marched away, trailing Sanga like an anxious little duckling. All the way through the warren of the under-ways until they reached the courtyard. Where the Tormentor lay bleeding.

Once again, Trainer Yeitch crossed her hands and summoned the song. The Tormentor’s wounds closed in exactly the same way. Trainer Yeitch whisked away, and Sanga was a beat behind scurrying after her.

_She would never know that the Tormentor saw her fleeing shape in the twilight._

Trainer Yeitch took Sanga to another room with different doctors. Where people prodded at her tattoos and pronounced them Taken. The next time they healed, they said, they would heal all the way and Sanga could start using the Divine.

Something else they said bothered her. “The slower the Taking, the stronger the Shunt.”

Her lessons had been mostly in following, listening, and doing. Not a great deal spent in reading and less in recitation.

“Here’s hoping this one isn’t an idiot,” snapped Trainer Yeitch.

 

* * *

 

The child furless came with two buckets and walked away with the one from the previous night. She also bowled him an apple or two or placed a cake between the bars. Whatever she gave him, it was gone too soon.

Today, two other smaller ones joined the kind one in the line. They were smaller than his tormentors, but taller than the little child who snuck him extra food.  _ Everyone _ was taller than the little child who snuck him extra food.

The line of poses was Ashivon’s morning entertainment. He could see the little child flourishing. That particular furless was improving at the poses. Getting a stronger voice. Getting better at the stances.

He would be proud of it, were it not for the fact that the furless used those stances to hurt him. Ashivon didn’t want to think of that little one harming him. Sooner or later, they would. Sooner or later, they would  _ all _ hurt him.

They were starting to fight amongst each other. Pairing off the smaller students under the guidance of the older teachers. They paired off the little one with the one Ashivon had hurt more than a week ago. The little one had a wooden staff. The big one had a glowing stick.

Staves blurred. The crack of one against the other was almost like music. The really big one barked out words Ashivon didn’t understand. He was sure some of them were names, but not who was who.

One of the big ones tried to attack the little one from behind. She was nimble, using her staff to leap up and kick one in the side of the head, and the impetus from that to kick the other square in the face. Ashivon didn’t care what would happen next. He thought that was hilarious.

He laughed. The little one he liked in spite of everything was  _ ferocious. _ That, and it was good to see the furless hurting other furless.

Ashivon decided then and there that he would enjoy whatever moments that came in opportunity. Be it the sweet treat that came with the little one in the morning, or the occasional laugh that came with watching the furless battle each other. He would earn pain for it, he was sure, but for now… he had a laugh.

 

* * *

 

There were two others who Trainer Yeitch selected as potential Barriers. They were older and -of course- bigger. Sanga could easily believe that the entire world would be taller than her for the rest of her life. Trainer Yeitch, Trainer Braak, and even Barrier Denassa said she was growing, but it was hard to believe it.

She landed like she was taught, getting ready for the next blow, and felt a chill up her spine as the Tormentor laughed. Taking joy in the pain of others  _ had _ to be a sin. Taking joy in a victory over two of her bullies should probably be related, however well she hid that joy from showing on her face.

Kyress, one of the new girls, crossed her hands like Trainer Yeitch had, and tried to bring up her Divine song. She shrieked as her relatively new tattoos ruptured and the marks burst in blood.

Trainer Braak came to the rescue, healing Kyress’ arms and chest. Trainer Yeitch sent her off with two of the Defender boys. Kyress looked devastated. She had been months in healing and was still waiting for the final scab to fall off. Just like Sanga was.

Now she’d have to start all over again.

Meanwhile, the other girl tapped her foot and fumed. “She don’t need to be wasting all our time like that,” Aeryn snarled. “We can all learn to fight, the rest of us.”

Impatience was not a beatitude to the saint. Sanga rubbed at her bandages and noticed… “Why aren’t you rubbing your bandages?”

Aeryn flicked her staff at Sanga, but she was ready to block it.

“Hold,” barked Trainer Yeitch, but Aeryn didn’t hold.

The staves clacked. Aeryn was a fast study, but Sanga was more intense at learning. Despite the orders to hold, Aeryn kept attacking. Therefore, Sanga kept defending. Left, right, sweep, swing. Trying to get past Sanga’s defences.

She watched Aeryn’s feet, since they were the loudest tattle-tales on her next moves. She could hear Trainer Braak and Trainer Yeitch yelling orders. She could hear the Tormentor howling and yelling, “No eat child,” over and over again.

None of her classmates were helping her. None were hindering, either. Considering how often these things happened, this was a nil-all win. She was just too big a temptation for the bullies. They couldn’t resist such an enormous source of sin. Her fault, they kept saying, for being born in sin. She had to find a way to stop them being so tempted.

Sanga ducked and swung at Aeryn’s knee. Krak! Aeryn lost her footing and went down. Sanga straightened and whirled her staff, stopping just short of an incapacitating blow. “HUA!”

Trainer Yeitch unbound one of Aeryn’s wrist bindings. “This has been fully healed for a week.”

“No,” said Aeryn. “I’m going to be a Barrier.”

“You’re more fitted for Executioner,” said Trainer Braak. “Perhaps. Defender for sure.”

“No! No! I’m going to be better than that! I’m not a thug! I want to be like the Saint! I’m going to be like the Saint!”

Trainer Braak pointed at two other Defender boys, who dragged Aeryn away.

Sanga knew the pattern of things. She handed her staff back to Trainer Braak. “I will report to the pennance room.” An hour or two of hauling around buckets of rocks would strengthen her limbs anyway. One seeing to bedpans or brewing up potions for the Church would help her learn humility.

“Trainee Sanga, halt,” said Trainer Braak.

Sanga froze at attention.

“Who said you were meant to report to pennance?”

“I caused the trouble,” said Sanga. “I know how this goes.”

“True that may be,” said Trainer Yeitch. “You also beat down temptation. Thus proving virtue.”

Oh. So that was how she meant to defeat it. She’d have done it sooner if they’d only  _ said _ something. Weren’t the Teachers and Trainers meant to help people learn things? That’s what they said they did.

Trainer Vaas appeared in the courtyard, all crisp and whip-thin and severe. “Trainer Braak, Trainer Yeitch… a word?”

Sanga and the rest of the trainees lined up at attention, waiting the next word of order whilst the Trainers clustered and murmured. Sanga strained her ears and picked up stray words that spilled out. Beast, and howling and disturb and move. Delicate popped up more than once.

The Trainers unclustered, and Trainer Vaas moved away, back to whichever dark corner he had come from.

“Trainees! We are moving our activities to the battle yard. The beast in training is being disturbed by our sparring and it’s doing odd things to its bloodlust. No more fighting in this courtyard until its had its first blooding.”

“SIR! YES SIR!”

“Let’s see how you sorry lot handle marching! HUP two three four. HUP two three four!”

Sanga did her best to follow along. Her legs weren’t long enough for a proper march, and she doubted they ever would be. Therefore, it was the shock of her life to tower over a class of little ones lead on knotted ropes by Teacher Aeis. Some of them were sucking their thumbs.

Had she ever been that small? She certainly remembered Teacher Aeis being a lot taller. In less than three hours, she would realise that her tattoos had stopped itching.


	6. Chapter 6

Ashivon watched the furless as he ate. It was the two and the four in the evening, and the little one in the morning. Of all the furless, he preferred the little one. The old one, he eyed dubiously. He didn’t trust anyone who wore those white gloves.

The two rarely did anything when he ate, and the four with glowing sticks stayed out of striking range until he was licking bloody gravy out of the bottom of the pot.

That hardly bothered him, any more. It was the way of things, here. What bothered him now was the itch in his horns. The thick, baby stubs were driving him to distraction. He daren’t stop to scratch while he was eating. The furless attacked when he stopped eating.

He could not bend well enough to reach his horns with his feet. He had tried in front of a pack of  _ childs, _ earlier that day. They had laughed at him, and the big furless had hurt him for it. But  _ damnit… _ his horns were  _ itchy… _ He didn’t want gravy in his hair, and he didn’t want them to attack. Not yet.

So, in desperation, he leaned an itchy horn against the stinging bars as he chewed, growling and grunting at both the stinging buzz and the lack of relief. He rubbed the horn there, in spite of the pain. Snarling.

_ “Fetchthebook,” _ said the one with the gloves. The one with the glowing stick shut off its lights and went running. Good. The ones on the other side of the bars couldn’t hurt him.

_ “Sir, whatinhell?” _ said one of the four inside the cage.

_ “Stayonguard,” _ warned the one in white gloves.  _ “ThisissomethingI’munfamiliarwith.” _

Ashivon ate and rubbed his itchy horns on the bars and snarled at the universe. Conflicting demands on him fought and it made him want to kill and eat and  _ scratch _ at his horns until  _ something _ gave way to give him some  _ relief. _ Yet no such relief came. Even blows from the four in with him would be  _ something, _ but when he licked the pot clean, they stayed out of their reach from him.

He licked his hands clean and watched the four. He was still hungry. He was always hungry. He said, “Eat,” but nothing happened. He rubbed and scratched at his horns, growling at the discomfort, tail twitching like it had ants in its fluff. He tried, “Not eat?” But again, the furless had no reaction.

Time passed slowly as Ashivon worried at his horns and growled. He was of half a mind to attack one of the four just to get  _ something _ out of the way, but just as he coiled himself, the one who usually glowed came back with a book. The one with the gloves took it, and repeated,  _ “Stayonguard…” _ as it flipped through pages.

Ashivon stood, trying to peer at what was within. He never expected to understand the words, but he hadn’t seen a book since his last night at home. That felt like eons ago, now. How long had it really been? Two years? Three? He’d lost track, in the monotony of pain and hunger.

He could see drawings. Drawings of his people! Young and old and in-between. Different drawings of ears and horns and the markings of black or brown or grey or white.

_ I knew I was at least the second they have taken, _ Ashivon thought.  _ Now I know they have done this hundreds of times. _

“Huh,” said the one in the gloves. Then,  _ “Fetchanotherpotofflesh, andthesethings. Wemusthurry.” _

_ “Sir?” _ said one of the four.

_ “Stayonguard,” _ repeated the one in gloves.

“Schdai’ungaard,” Ashivon mocked. He knew those words from his mouth wouldn’t have any effect. It still felt good to watch them boggle when he did it. The only good he had.

“SIT!” The one in gloves moved to take his off.

Ashivon knew what furless and bare hands meant. He hunkered in place, as still as he could get, what with the itch foremost in his senses. Claw and bars and growling didn’t do a thing for it, but they were all he had.

A pot of stew came with running feet, and Ashivon was herded by the four to a specific side of the pot. As he ate, they surrounded him. Behind them, more furless swarmed. Two to a wall near the stinking latrine hole. Two to a specific part of the floor that looked like it had rods in it.

He could smell their fear, but the food had a greater importance. For now.

There were no beatings when he finished the pot, and no more furless in his cage. Even the one in gloves was gone. There were new things in his cage. On the wall, a large square of something straw-coloured and rough-looking. It felt sharp under his poking finger. On the floor, a longer, thicker mat of something that looked rough and woven. He tried his madly itching horns against the wall thing, and felt -finally!- sweet relief as the itch was soothed at last.

Curiosity made him investigate the thick pad held in place by the strange posts. He dug his claws into it and felt a new relief. He needed this, hand and foot. He had needed them both, and the furless hadn’t known until they looked in that book with the drawings.

All this time, he had thought they could see into his mind and act in advance. They didn’t know everything. They were flawed.

Perhaps… perhaps, he could deceive them.

 

* * *

 

Barrier Denassa was feeling poorly, and gave her the work of getting her Tormentor’s name. No other hints as to how to do it. That, she had said, was the test. If Sanga could do that without any other help, then she was ready for the rest of the secrets. Barrier Denassa said she had a hidden book with everything she and her predecessors had learned, things not detailed in the  _ Encyclopaedia Demonica, _ that Trainer Vaas used as a guide to training their Tormentor.

Sanga would be studying  _ that _ book, or select passages of it, at a later date. For now, she had to earn the privilege. Her first step, after visiting Barrier Denassa, was to visit the Church kitchens. She lied, telling them that Sister Denassa ordered her to fetch any spare sweet pastries and fruit. Ones that were stale or close to turning, so that she wasn’t taking anything that wouldn’t have wound up in the middens anyway.

Those in the basket, Sanga covered the contents with a cloth. Not that that would stop their Tormentor. She only hoped to stop predation from anyone else in the Church’s labyrinthine halls. She kept her sleeves rolled up and her hair tucked into her wimple so she looked like she was on a job. Hardly anyone questioned someone with the tattoos who was hurrying about with their sleeves rolled up.

When she reached the courtyard, Trainer Vaas and one of his Juniors were already there. They were busying themselves with a flesh pot and the buckets of water. Not one, not two, but three of them.

They only fed the Tormentor at sunset… “What’s happening?”

Trainer Vaas glared at her peering down his long nose at her. “Huh. Trainee Sanga. Barriers are always messing about with Tormentors. Up to nonsense. What nonsense did Barrier Denassa send you on?”

Sanga saw no reason to hide the truth. “She sent me to find the Tormentor’s name, sir.”

He scoffed. “They’re animals. They don’t have names and they don’t have any understanding of civilised behaviour. We’re lucky they even know what clothes are.”

Sanga thought,  _ Animals don’t know what clothes are. People dress them. Well. People dress them when the animals are pampered pets. _ She said, “I can hear it grunting, sir. What’s gone wrong with the Tormentor? Am… Am I out of a job?”

Laughter. Good. If they laughed, they diminished her. If she was diminished, she was unimportant. If she was unimportant, they had no true reason to conceal anything from her.

“It’s maturing,” said Trainer Vaas. “Becoming a grown demon. This is simply part of the overall process. Just like women get their menses or men get beards and muscles. That…” he gestured into the cage. “Is going to grow even faster, get stronger, get quicker. Soon… possibly sooner than we’re ready, it will be Tormenting and Testing sinners.”

The Junior said, “The whole Capital and half the surrounding towns will come to see its first blooding. All that gold coming in at last.”

“Patience,” said Trainer Vaas. “There are still years, yet.” He cleared his throat. “Eat.”

A pattering of paws, and the sound of ravenous ingestion. Trainer Vaas lead his Junior away.

Sanga counted slowly to twenty, then came around the corner to see the Tormentor gobbling up the contents of the pot. He was three quarters of the way down already. He really did eat like he was starving, and ate like he feared the food being taken away. Not a morsel escaped his notice.

She waited until he was licking his hands clean, and brought out a slightly wrinkled apple. She knew where he was with apples. It certainly got his attention.

“Eat?” he said.

He had learned that word as a command. Not a question.

Sanga pointed to her chest and said, “Sanga.”

He dared not approach the bars. She knew it. He knew it. He glanced over his shoulder to the door of his cell, then looked back at the apple in her hand. “Eat…”

Sanga repeated her motion. “Sanga. Sang-gah.”

Realisation flared in his glowing eyes. “Sssang… guh.”

“Good boy,” she tossed the apple through the bars. “Eat.”

He caught it and brought it to his mouth in one smooth motion. SNAP, SNAP, SNAP, SNAP! There was nothing left of it but juice on his hands and glimpses of pulp as he chewed the last of it.

Next was a frosted honey cake. She took a bite to prove it was food. Pointed to herself, and said, “Sanga.”

This time, he was much quicker. “Sanga.”

“Eat,” she tossed it. Watched in amazement as he made it vanish in two swift bites.

This time, she pointed to herself and did not speak.

“Sanga,” he said, and instantly focussed on her hand dipping into the basket. He fielded the berry tart and had it in his maw almost before she had told him to eat.

Now, she pointed to him.

He looked at her finger. Looked at the basket. Looked back to the door. Winced and ground his horns against the bars. He said, “Eat,” again, but Sanga simply pointed to his chest again.

Another little dawn in those shining eyes. He pointed to her. “Sanga.” Nodded, and pointed to himself. “Ashivon. Ash...ee..vahn.”

“Ashivon,” Sanga echoed, and tossed him a bun with, “Eat.”

His smile was disturbing, with those sharp teeth in it, but Sanga was more pleased with the knowledge that a demon could smile. She knew he could laugh, thanks to the fight in this courtyard. But most importantly, she knew that he understood more than he could say.

Animals didn’t have names. No talking bird had ever named itself. No monkey with a piece of chalk could write a name. Even the dullards doomed for repetitious manufactory work could learn and remember names.

The Tormentor, whatever he was, was more than an animal. More, too, than a dullard. He was more than a foreigner, too. He had no basis for knowing the local speech, no interpreter, no guide in form of book, scroll, map, or person.

He had been taken from the only home he knew and treated like a savage animal. No wonder he  _ behaved _ like a savage animal.

Sanga tried to give him words. Hand, hat, shoe, foot. Simple words. Things he should know. If he could talk like people… perhaps the Trainers could treat him like people. That was her dream, but he flagged at it five words in. Preferring to grind his horns on the bars and growl and whine.

Something was wrong with his horns. She could see them wobbling, but she couldn’t see why. She let him have the rest of her basket and let him get back to easing his woes with the strange pads in his cell.

Poor Ashivon. He had troubles enough with… she guessed she could call it Demonic Puberty. Rising to his demon manhood, or whatever it was called.

...puberty…

She wouldn’t be getting her menses, sooner or later. Tormentors were activated by the smell of blood! What was to be done when—?

Sanga dropped the basket and cloth off at the nearest return bay and rushed for Barrier Denassa’s chambers. She suddenly had a lot of urgent questions.


	7. Chapter 7

His little furless was called Sanga. She was a female furless. The grown ones with the flat chests were male, and the lumpy ones were female. Ashivon could tell them apart by scent, now, all the same. Sanga was kind, and took risks to feed him. He could tell those foodstuffs were ill-got gains, and she had done it for him. She was trying to teach him. She was trying to be kind in a place teeming with the unkind.

She was small, and weak, and had to pay for her actions, if his fate was any sign. She knew how to hide her pains, too. He had seen her get hurt and continue on with barely a hint that she was in pain. Sanga had to be suffering for him.

He would kill every furless he could reach… except for her.  _ If _ they ever gave him that chance.

The pots were coming three a day, now. Dawn, midday, and sunset. The buckets were more plentiful and someone was sent to see that they were filled when empty. That was a good thing, but was it Sanga whispering in their shadows or a trick by the white-gloves to make him like them more than he hated them?

It wouldn’t work, if it was a trick. He knew what kindness looked like from the furless. It looked like Sanga.

He rubbed and scrubbed at his horns for a week, and still they itched. It was Sanga who, fearless, grabbed hold of one and  _ twisted _ it, just so, letting the inner horn, thinner and sharper, free.

He had learned, “Yes,” from her. And angled his head so she could work her magic on the other one.

The Elder furless had watched, and gave Sanga some advice. She was a good little furless, and hurried to complete whatever duty it was. Ashivon was just relieved to have that  _ itch _ gone, and didn’t even notice the Elder furless watching him as he washed his new horns. As he washed his hair. As he felt compelled to scratch at the mat on the floor.

_ “Goodboy,” _ she crooned.  _ “Good  _ Ashivon.”

Of course the Elder would know his name. Sanga was her student. She would have said something.

He couldn’t understand much of their alien tongue, but he could understand the tone. It was the one used on babies and pets to let them know for sure that they were doing wanted things.

“Goot,” he tried, but the old furless didn’t seem to hear.

 

* * *

 

Some days, Sanga barely had time to scratch herself. Sure, she got praise for bringing the potioneers the Tormentor’s baby horns and even some of the goop inside, but the reward for a job well done was always a harder job.

They judged her a strong conduit, so she practiced her healing on every severe injury that survived to enter the Church’s expansive hospice. When she wasn’t zinging with Divine energies, she was in the pothecaries and potioneers’ grinding, sieving, mixing, pounding, straining, and rolling this or that together from whatever foul ingredients they had gathered. On Sabaday afternoons, the only day of relative rest she had, she was studying. Reading select passages from the  _ Encylopaedia Demonica, _ or privately studying Barrier Denassa’s cramped little journal of Tormentor secrets.

There were weeks at an end where the only time she had with Ashivon was dashing past his cage when the courtyard was empty, and flinging some sweet treat through the bars with a rushed and breathless, “Eat!”

They ran her ragged. Every waking hour. Fetching, carrying, running from space to space. The dirtiest work. The most disgusting work. They even had her butchering flesh from an executed criminal for the Tormentor’s pot. That had to be the worst. They were giving him the taste for human flesh and blood.

He would learn what they were feeding him in the arena.

Sanga wept for him, that night. Every month, they cooked the… call it ‘meat’... less and less. One day, it would be raw. One day, it would be still steaming from a fresh corpse.

One day, he would bite into a real human being - a convicted criminal, sure, but still a human who had a life and a love and a family - and taste something familiar.

Sanga never saw anyone else going through the same training. She had to wonder how the Church planned to work around her absences when and if they happened. Sooner or later, her womanhood would assert itself. Sooner or later, that would be a problem.

_ The mark made him crave blood… _

That worried her. It worried her immensely. It worried her despite Barrier Denassa’s and Trainer Yeitch’s assertions that Tormentors found that a woman’s blood to be an unappetising scent. It was not, they said,  _ living _ blood. It had gone sour before it came out, and was not like the blood of a wound.

She could only believe when she found the stain and reek in her own undergarments, and had to have a rushed and mortifying discussion with the more grown nuns in the Womens’ ward to get a belt and wadding to keep it from spilling further. Sanga felt like  _ she _ reeked, like the whole world could smell the stench she smelled in the privy.

Another year passed, almost before she knew it. Not once did Ashivon react to her blood times. By the time the year turned, she knew the most about the workings of the Church. From the deepest cesspit to the highest steeple. How exhausted leaders with vows of celibacy gave high positions to their illegitimate by-blows… but only the sons.

They talked a great deal about how women were exalted by bringing life into the world, but reviled them and kept them down or busy at every opportunity. How murder was the worst crime, but Defenders were sanctioned to kill a criminal if they fought.

_ How they used a dead child to take another child from his home and family… _

The Church, she learned, was rotted on the inside. Yet it was the only thing that kept the Capital and the State in order. Such order as there was. Gold counted more than virtue. A mother was sacred until she gave birth, then the child was a bastard and the girl was a whore… unless she found a man to give her sanctity via marriage, or managed to pretend she had never been a mother by giving the child to the Church.

Another fine crop of bastards to use as grist for the mill.

She fed some of them, when they couldn’t find anything else to keep her busy. Babies always needed. They needed changing, they needed bathing, they needed feeding and, if one wanted them to thrive, they needed loving. Sanga made sure to spare a hug and a kiss for her tiny brothers and sisters of the basket.

She would never have a golden robe nor speak to the throng, but she could make a difference amongst those with the least worth.  _ That _ was what the Saint had preached.  _ That _ was the message that the Church ignored at its convenience.

Sanga was too tired to say it. They probably made sure of that. Barriers between the Church’s alleged sanctity and the living sin of a Tormentor were privy to many secrets. They could talk if they weren’t run to exhaustion. They could  _ say things. _ They could  _ ask the wrong questions. _

Questions like:  _ If it’s really an animal, why does the Tormentor learn far more than an animal could? _ Or,  _ How does it know how to dress itself? _ Or,  _ Has anyone tried to learn its words or seriously teach it ours? _ Or even,  _ Why do we even do this anyway? _

All of those questions plagued her head, but she never had the time to ask nor the energy to listen.

Soon, far too soon, one of the Trainee Defenders died under Ashivon’s claws. Just as Trainer Braak had predicted. Too soon after that, he would be pressed into service.

Too soon, he would be killing for the Church.


	8. Chapter 8

Something was different, today. Ashivon could feel it. The pot did not come at the dawn, but orders of Hands and Sit, they bound his wrists and ordered Stand. They hauled him in a new direction, to new doors and pushed him through.

There, the binds on his wrists faded away.

There was a short hall and another set of doors, which opened slowly to sunlight. A wall of noise hit him as the sunshine did. Ashivon stepped forward just to see the sky.

His ears flicked back to protect themselves. A thousand furless lined the tall walls of this space. More than a thousand. A thousand thousand. A thousand times _that_. All loud. All with their mouths open for making noise.

 _It’s going to take me a long time to kill them all,_ he thought.

There was another door across the wide space. It, too, opened and a furless clad only in pants stepped out. This one was a he, and he bore a black diamond-shaped mark on his chest. He had cloth binding his hands, and a wary stance.

Ashivon knew what the bare-handed furless meant. They meant pain. All of them had hurt him, when they touched him with bare hands and light. All… except Sanga.

This one did not have the markings of burning light. He could not make a stick appear like the others did.

The furless approached, but Ashivon was ready. Hate and hunger boiled in his belly and he _knew_ that he could take down the ones with the light. He pounced, clawing and kicking and hot blood sprayed and all he knew was hate…

_The flesh tasted so good… like the stuff they had in the pots…_

Ashivon sprang away from the body, hating at the roaring crowds. They were chanting.

_“Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood! Blood!”_

“...blud,” he repeated.

He didn’t have time to think, because the ones with sticks and glowing marks dragged the body away, and another furless came out of the doors. This one had a cudgel.

They wanted him to kill like an animal? He could kill like an animal.

 

* * *

 

“Where there is wounding, I will heal,” said Sanga. She had said it once before the dawn, taking the private oaths of a Barrier. Now she was saying it in public, before a congregation. “Where there is sorrow, I will comfort.” She meant every word, heart and soul. “Where there is rot, I will purify. Where there is evil, I will sanctify. Where there is disorder, I will bring obedience.” They meant this to keep her under. To bow her to the will of the Church.

They used the Saints’ words in vain. They used their gods’ names in vain. They used the Teachings to warp society to their will.

_Where there is rot, I will purify…_

They engineered terrible secrets and Sanga knew many of them. The Divine Ink, the stuff they used to mark Defenders, Healers, and even Barriers like herself. The stuff with which they made the mark of the holiest…

It was made out of Demon stuff.

She had taken buckets of Ashivon’s slops to a special vat, where they broke it down into slurry and distilled a foul liquid from it, and derived a dark powder from it. Both liquid and powder went up to the potioneers, where she had used those, ground Demon hair, and some other profane ingredients to mix up a distinctively smelly ichor they called Potion Three.

She had carried containers of Potion Three to special storerooms. She had fetched Potion Three for the tattooists, who greeted it with smiles as the Divine Ink.

The Divine Mark had come from demonic sources. It was mixed with minor poisons, like Deadly Nightshade and brimstone, and Darkwort, also known as Angel’s Bane. The holiest of symbols, made from ink made out of the worst things.

The entire system was flawed, from start to finish, and she couldn’t talk to anyone about it.

“Where there is disobedience, I will bring punishment.” Sanga had thought about that one a great deal. She had no idea how to punish the Church that ran her whole world. She had no idea how to bring it down. “I am the light,” she vowed, “I will show the others the way.”

A bishop who had fathered fifteen little trainees in the Church sanctified Sanga’s headcloth and two of his sons placed it ceremonially on her head.

She was a Nun, now. A healer, a defender, a barrier between good and evil. Just as powerless as any other bastard in these extensive halls. All she had was the alleged respect of her peers and the dubious affirmation that she had been washed clean of all prior sin by the light of the Divine.

It still felt divine. Singing in her heart. Singing in her soul. It lifted her up and made her feel warm and _why should one being suffer so the rest can feel like this?_ It didn’t seem fair. It didn’t feel right.

And yet…

There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t leave. Life in the orphanage and then the Church had left her with no money, no resources, no connections but those which the Church gave her. She wasn’t supposed to ask, _How did the Saint work all this out in the first place?_ But that question kept her up, some nights. Wondering.

The key, she realised in the end, was performative piety. Say things the right way, do things the right way, behave in the right way… and no waves need happen. Sanga would never rise to the ranks of Exalted Mother. She would never be a Saint. She knew this, but she had to express the hope to appear to be a virtuous Nun like all the others. Rarely a thought for herself. Always a thought for others, even if it was in the form of chiding them for their impiety. Which was always easier to spot.

Five hours after her investiture as a Nun, she was working the Arena. Sanga was told this when she was elbows deep in someone’s impacted rectum.

“Horrendous. Timing,” she managed, shifting the blockage with some blood and a lot of screaming. A wash in carbolic and hot water and she was marching with all speed towards the Halls of Purity - which always stank like death. There were no beheaded corpses in the halls. The stench of blood and little more. A Defender pointed her to a waiting station and she looked out.

Ashivon!

She almost called his name. He was staring uncertainly about him, and they’d let out one of the murderers. Sanga felt her stomach flip. This was the Tormentor’s first blooding. This was Ashivon’s first kill.

The Church held that killing was the worst crime of them all. It was why meat was forbidden within the Capital in general and the larger cities surrounding them. Of course, they couldn’t police it entirely. The poor ate whatever they could get and the rich… could pay the black market for whatever they liked.

Murderers, they all agreed, should die for their crimes. However, their deaths could not be held sacred if they came at the hands of a fellow human. Executing an executioner was… a slippery slope. Therefore, the Church summoned demons and trained them to kill. Just like they had trained old Thanak. Just like they had been training Ashivon.

They had been teaching him to hate humans since the day they brought him here. Five years. Almost six. He was of a height with the penitent in the ring. Almost edging up on being taller than the man. The convicted murderer had bindings on his arms. He had beaten someone to death.

Sanga held her breath. Ashivon pounced. Leaping onto the criminal as the crowd roared. Swipe, bite, punch… blood flowed. Ashivon took a chunk out of the murderer and a body fell to the sand in the arena.

_He looked vaguely sick. He knew. He knew they had been feeding him dead people._

He didn’t have time to have remorse about it. The Church had another criminal for him. A man with a cudgel.

Sooner or later, they would pit him against someone who knew how to fight. Ashivon couldn’t survive long on sheer savagery. The Church always had more murderers than they had demons to kill them.

Something had to be done.

If a criminal managed to beat the Tormentor, they were deemed innocent and allowed to go free. Free to harm people again. If a criminal managed to beat a Tormentor… that Tormentor would be dead.

Something _had_ to be done.

 

* * *

 

 

He was covered in blood. He felt ashamed of that. Ashivon knew, now, that the mark on his arm made him crave that. Made him want to eat their flesh. Made him even angrier. Now that its influence was spent, Ashivon hated himself.

He was sticky and itching with blood. He felt worse than sweaty and disgusting. He ached for a hot bath. He longed to taste anything other than furless flesh and blood.

His ears hissed with the after-echoes of furless roaring. He could hardly hear what the furless were saying. Which was why the burning light came as such a shock. They pushed him face first into an alcove, held him down to his knees.

Bucket after bucket of cold water sluiced over him. He sputtered, growled, and shook. Just in time to receive a face full of more cold water. Bucket after bucket splashed into him. Chilling him right down as they soaked him to the skin.

Ashivon was shivering and chattering when they shoved him back into his cage.

Where Sanga was waiting. There were steaming things in her basket and a thick cloth in her hands.

She taught him,  _ towel, _ and he let her dry his arms through the bars before he took it and scrubbed the cold water from himself. It was a blessing just to be dry. Further blessing came with the hot food. Sweet. Savoury.  _ Not _ made out of furless flesh.

Sanga took back her towel, folding it into the bottom of the basket. She had to. Any hint that she had been friendlier with him than she should be… things would go from the existing bad to an undefinable ‘worse’. As if it could get any worse than today.

Ashivon said, “The Elder… went through this too?” But he said it in his words. 

Sanga frowned at them, confused. For a moment, her face brightened, and he thought she understood, but… no. She started talking with her words. Excited and happy about something Ashivon didn’t understand. She dashed off to the trees at the far end of the courtyard.

He watched in confusion as Sanga did a lot of leaping about, stuffing things down her top, and then running back. She collided with the bars, but this time, they didn’t harm her. She was happy, so Ashivon was happy.

Sanga brought out an apple. Taught him that word. Let him eat, for which he was always grateful. She had another apple, and he said the word… but this time, she shook her head, pointing to him.

After a couple of false starts, he understood. She wanted  _ his _ words. But… he had no word for this fruit. It just didn’t grow in his homelands. What would he call it, if he had seen it at home? Ah. Yes. “Roundfruit,” he told her. Then extended the syllables. Teaching her.

It took hours. His folk had words for clothing, pants, shirt, belt, and hat… but none for shoes. He had  _ plenty _ of words for his cell, but stuck to the factual ones. Bar, door, wall. Sanga seemed to soak them all up. Eager.

The moon was getting high when she flagged at last, and the apples were all gone. Ashivon hadn’t realised how tired he was, either. Until she left, leaving him a new word. “Goodnight.”

 

* * *

 

Sanga started a new journal. Barrier Denassa’s book of secrets had filled more to the brim than any other book she’d seen. It had little more to teach her. Now she was learning from the Tormentor. From Ashivon.

It was easy to have names for things. Nouns. Names for movement would be harder, she knew. Her spelling was pure guesswork, but the Church rarely cared about that sort of thing.

_ They may burn her for writing this book in the first place. _

It was pure heresy. Writing down the language of Demons. Her five-year-old self, steeped in the Teachings, Catechisms, and Verses of the Church, would have been horrified. If the higher echelons knew what she was doing here…

They hadn’t known about the book of secrets. They would not know about the book of tongues. Sanga kept both well hidden, and wrote in them whenever she had a spare moment. Being lax in her letters had given her an excellent memory. She could scribe a word or three before she collapsed into her bed, scribe a paragraph or two when she rose in the early morning. It would all get in there in the end.

As for teaching Ashivon to hold up against a fighter…

The Church didn’t much care where its Nuns, Defenders, or Barriers kept up their physical regimes. Sanga chose the courtyard facing Ashivon’s cage. During hours in which the fighting classes were not present. The other thing to be certain of was when Ashivon was there to witness her.

Move after move, again and again. Pose after pose. One, two, three, four… over and over for the one hour of the day that she had to spare. She was sweaty and blown and Ashivon had been watching, so she tossed him a couple of apples on her way out.

It took weeks like that for him to realise she was trying to show him what to do. She had no way to correct him, no knowledge of how to adapt the Church’s defence fighting style to Ashivon’s unique anatomy. She had to let him figure it out for himself.

A month, and he was copying her forms. Three, four… and he was shadowfighting just a beat behind her.

What worried her was that he wasn’t using it in the arena. He was still acting like an animal.

What really worried her was that he was going to get hurt.


	9. Chapter 9

Some of the blood on him was his. He’d torn a furless’ throat out when the anger rode him. His chest still stung, but the anger was gone. Now, all that was left was the shame.

Shame at himself for liking the taste. Shame for the blood on his face. Shame for the cut on his chest. Shame for actually looking forward to the alcove and the people with the buckets.

Ashivon knelt willingly, hissing at the burning touch on his neck. He still didn’t have the words to tell them that it wasn’t necessary. They wouldn’t let him say them anyway.

Water invaded his life. Cold and rough, and delivered almost like a weapon. Like they wished they could wash _him_ away.

_“Wait,”_ said a familiar voice. Sanga! _“Letmeseetoit.”_

The hand pressing him down reduced its pressure to a light restraint, letting Ashivon straighten up and face her. The first time he had seen her without bars between them. So close… if his arms were free, he could reach out and touch her.

She raised her hands, and the light sprang up in her.

No! No, no, no! No. Please. Not her too. Not her hurting him like all the rest! NO!

Ashivon braced, wincing in anticipation as the glow filled her marks and her hands… Flinched as she moved. Then gasped in shock and wonder as…

_Warmth like the sunshine and a sense of comfort like his mother’s arms filled him from the heart out, and a gentle caress closed off the pain on his chest._

Ashivon stared at her in wonder, like a child who had just seen their first rainbow. He didn’t have time to savour the sensation, because one of those with the bucket took the opportunity to hit him square in the face with their burden.

By the time he was done spitting and hissing and shaking… Sanga was gone.

He took the rest of his journey in a kind of stunned fog. The light from her didn’t hurt. It had felt… glorious. It had felt… like the only good thing in the wicked world around him.

Ashivon wanted more. Craved it, in fact. The very idea that the light didn’t have to burn set his brain on fire. He wanted more of that warmth. Ached for that kindness. It may be easy to hate the furless, but Sanga? Sanga was… different.

Sanga was the only kindness he had ever known. The only gentleness he had ever witnessed. She learned how to fight and she should have. He had seen how cruel these furless were to each other. She should know how to keep herself safe from her own kind.

He had thought he’d known a form of joy in the arena. The roar of the crowds watching above were a kind of approval. Sometimes, they would throw food down, or at him. Ashivon would always snap it up in a trice before it could hit him, though it did occur to him that they meant the thrown food as an insult.

The furless loved it when their own kind were hurt. He knew that much. They had also cheered when he had got hurt. Any blood spilled got their approval, no matter who or how it was spilled.

They may not actually care if he lived or died in that arena. They wrapped up his arms so that none could see the red mark on him. To the rest, to the crowd, he was just a monster. A savage beast set loose for their entertainment.

All of them unaware. Unaware that they fed him their flesh. Unaware that they made him like this. Unaware that the fights were, more or less, rigged.

Unaware that he was lonely, and alone, and hurting inside because he had felt a kindness, a comfort, and knew he was unlikely to get any more. They kept her away from him. Kept him away from everyone. The only touch he would ever get would be the burning one.

He was a long time falling into sleep, that night.

 

* * *

 

They said she had a fever, and diagnosed her with demonic corruption. She had been too close to the Tormentor, they said. That conflicted with the Divine inside her and made her ill.

Lies.

Hogwash.

Sanga knew damned well that she was sick because she’d been up half the night - all night, if she discounted the many fitful attempts at slumber - worrying about Ashivon. This was the first time she had needed to heal him. The first time she had used the Divine on him.

He’d been frightened of her. Terrified that she would hurt him like everyone else had. He had flinched when she channeled it, looked so _betrayed…_

Worse was the look in his eyes when it _hadn’t_ hurt. Like she was the Saint or better than the Saint or… even… close to the gods themselves. Like he would start bowing to her like a Servant of the Will of the High would bow in the chapels.

She ran at the first opportunity. Fled for the sanctuary of a chapel and spent a solid hour in prayer. Mouth running through the rote phrases and mind spinning. Running through what she’d learned and what she suspected and the questions none dared ask out loud.

The Saint had walked into Hell as a sacrifice and emerged with the secrets of the Divine. Secrets now wrapped up in ritual, superstition, and layers upon layers of lies.

If any of the Defenders knew the secret behind the ink of their tattoos…

If any of the People knew the secrets of the Church…

If anyone else knew what she knew…

It was heresy. Worse than heresy. It was the reason why the Church kept education out of the hands of all but the most talented and the most affluent. It was why those who accomplished an education were funneled straight to the Church in service. Reading was dangerous. There was always the risk that someone might read the wrong things. Find the passages in Holy Writ that didn’t match the words most often said at the pulpit.

What bothered her most was Ashivon. She could focus on him, rather than how to bring down the entire rotten edifice of the Church. If she could keep Ashivon safe. If she could keep him well. If she could learn from him, if she could teach him…

None of that would work if he feared her.

None of that would work if he l— No. He couldn’t. It wasn’t possible for him to _love_ her, was it? She was one of the enemy. People like her all around him had done little more than hurt him and torment him since the very day he came here.

A frightened child, shivering in shock, teeth chattering as he tried to get warm. Huddled in a cage and afraid of a strange new world…

Teacher Aies had said it was bloodlust. Sanga had heard it again from other orphanage tutors. Anything and everything a Tormentor did was a sign of bloodlust. To make the children afraid. To make them trust the Church that held such a powerful creature at bay. To give them an enemy to fear and hate.

Children with families would learn the same at their parents’ hips. Learning to shout at the demon in the fighting pit. Learning to hate the murderers. Learning to jeer and cheer with all their peers. Learning to be good little vassals. Learning that questions were mistakes.

Did he hate her, now? Did he fear her? Did he find himself wanting more of the healing light that everyone said ran strong in her?

Had she made him crave the one good feeling he had ever known?

She spent all night worrying about it. Fretting about him. Unable to sleep and out of things to add to her secret journal. Worrying herself into a sickness borne, not of demonic association, but more likely from the bad odours of the Pennance Level, with all its stinking blood and vermin-riddled corpses and alley drains overflowing with prisoner’s slops.

They said sleep and simple food was all they could let her have, so that the Divine would grow stronger in her. They had the reason wrong, but the method right. Rest so she could combat the sickness. Simple food because she still needed sustenance to fight, even if it was fighting internally.

All the good Barriers went through this sickness, they said. Even Barrier Denassa, one year in her grave now, went through this. Good. It meant that she cared. That all the good ones cared.

It meant that she, too, would be seen as good by the Church.

It might even shut them up about how her basket origins would lead to a path of sin, but Sanga did not expect miracles.

 

* * *

 

 

He didn’t see her for seven days. Seven days of waiting. Seven days of strangers coming with white light to hurt him and test him and exit again. Seven days since she filled him with comfort and love.

Ashivon feared that Sanga had died.

Then, after the next series of fights, there she was. A little thinner. A little paler. Dark eyes focussed on him as they lead him away with blood on his body. None of it his. He’d almost stopped to stare. Almost stumbled. Almost said her name…

Then one of the other furless prodded him onwards for the kneeling, burning, and buckets of water.

She came again after that, when he was wet and wretched in his cell. There was fear in her eyes.

“Sanga,” he said, relief thick in his throat. He didn’t have words enough to ask,  _ Did they hurt you? _ But he tried his best. “Sanga… grab… ow?”

It took her a moment, finding the words he didn’t have. “Get. Hurt.” She corrected, gesturing across her chest like the knife that had cut him. “Hurt.”

“Hurt,” he repeated, and gave her his word for exchange. “Sanga… Hurt?”

“Sanga  _ sick,” _ she said, and realised that she would have to explain it. “No grab good, here,” she said, clutching at her middle.

Say what he liked about the furless, and he often did when none were near to hear, but they kept him healthy and never made him spit up his food. He could only vaguely recall feeling sick, once. Back in his home. His mother…

_ He could no longer remember her face. _

His mother had held him and sang the awful feeling away. Helped him sleep and kept him cool and fed him good food to make him strong. Neither he nor Sanga had those comforts. As near as they could tell, they only had each other, and they had never touched. They likely never would.

“No… good?” He managed, copying what she had done with her hands.

“No good,” she agreed. “Good... Good here.”

The bars snapped and crackled at his fur. He was too close. He wanted to be closer. He wanted to be on the other side of them. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to hold her safe. He wanted to run, run away from this hellish place and find somewhere safe from the other furless who only ever wanted to hurt.

Ashivon didn’t know how to say any of that. “Want grab good… Want… Sanga.”

She looked so sad. “Ashivon no want,” she insisted. “No want.” Tears slipped down her cheek. “Hurts.”

Very carefully, he brushed a tear away with the back of his claw. “Hurts,” he agreed.

She pulled away. He pulled his hand back inside.

They had to be more careful. They had to keep apart. The rest of the furless wouldn’t like him getting close to Sanga. She was the only furless who didn’t hate him or hurt him. Therefore, she was precious.

 

* * *

 

Sanga looked up from her reading to see Sister Buana. Sneering down on her as if Sanga was some kind of obscure, yet filthy insect she had not expected to encounter. “What,” whispered the severe woman, “are you doing in the library?”

“I am expanding my education, of course,” she said. Buana had had a unique hatred for Sanga ever since elementary education because she was a third daughter from a wealthy family and Sanga was a nobody from a basket, yet they both had the same capability with their numbers and letters. “Everyone should strive, remember?”

That earned a glare that, if Sister Buana had the bars of a Defender, would have resulted in a Divine Weapon manifesting in her hands. She only had the Bands of a Healer, and could not harm anyone, not with the Light. It rankled her that Sanga had been her equal in learning capability, it chafed her worse that Sanga was a Barrier and she was not. Her self-entitlement wouldn’t let her believe that a basket’s daughter could be more essential to the Church than herself. “As I recall, you should be too busy to read. Perhaps I should call this to the attention of the Cynosures.”

“You could do that,” said Sanga, deliberately calm. “Be sure to remind Cynosure Varyth of the conversation I had with him concerning me knowing more of Tormentor health and remedies.”

Cynosure Varyth was famously absent-minded and all about reading up on anything and everything. Whatever obsession possessed his head dominated other things like: what day of the week it was, whether he’d eaten a meal, or if he’d put his pants on yet. The Church held that he was a genius, but the specific kind of genius that required being looked after. He had a staff of four, working in shifts, to make certain he slept, ate, visited the privy, and remembered to fully dress.

He called everyone “Sonny” or “Miss” and treated everyone else as an interchangeable part of a larger machine that arranged everything unimportant for him. Getting any kind of witness out of him was worse than pulling teeth.

Sister Buana growled, almost fit to rival Ashivon in his worst mood. “It is my understanding that seeking too much knowledge can corrupt the mind and direct it away from the Divine. You were always corrupt from the day you were born, and so shall you be for the rest of your days.”

“Why, Sister,” Sanga cooed, “It was my understanding that our vows and our marks washed us clean of our past sins. I do wish to know better, perhaps you could show me the passage of Holy Writ where it says such?” She knew too well that there was no such passage. So did Sister Buana.

“Of course. You said the words,” she allowed. “Many are those who use the words of Holy Writ to their advantage. I wonder if you are one.”

Sanga thought,  _ I would wonder the same. _ “If you find a way to tell, sweet sister, do let me know. They say the Church is overdue for another purge of hidden infidels. I’d love to help you find them.” That was how you got around accusations, subtle and gross, by acting as if they couldn’t possibly apply to yourself.

Sanga had learned to be good at acting. You had to, or be a true innocent, in order to survive for long in the Church.

“Sadly, that ability is not in my power,” admitted Sister Buana. “May I assist in your research?”

“Any incidents where the Tormentor needed medical assistance beyond the reach of healing would be fine, Sister,” said Sanga. “I’ve noted a lot of births recently, and any little blessed ones could bring disease with them when they come to see the Tormentor. It is for the good of the Church that I am prepared, after all.”

“You are, of course, careful to keep a distance from the Tormentor,” she said. “Many a Barrier has succumbed to their corruption.”

Oh, she was  _ not _ having this conversation, today. “My marks took a year and a half to heal, dear Sister. How long did yours take, again?”

_ That _ put a lemon in her mouth. She stormed off into the stacks, in search of Sanga’s sources. Sanga knew very well that Buana’s marks healed in less than a month, She was incredibly weak when it came to channeling the Divine. Which was one of the many reasons why she was in the library rather than the hospice.

Sister Buana arrived with a large basket almost overflowing with old scrolls and books. “For your lacking education,” she said with mock sweetness.

“Thank you  _ so _ much,” Sanga sniped in kind. She had four days before the next Testing on Sabaday. If she was any good at this, she might have something resembling a decent guide for Demon medicine before the end of the year. Kept, of course, in a separate book from the secrets and the tongues. If she lived to fifty, she would have to find a way to test her prentice so they could earn them all.

But first… she would have to live to fifty.


	10. Chapter 10

Ashivon liked the dance with Sanga. It gave him something to do between the anger of the fights and the shame of the blood. Moving as she moved, perfectly in synchronisation, he felt closer to her than touching.

She would always glance his way, more than once, during the dance. Sometimes, he would catch a mischievous gleam in her dark eyes. The ghost of a smile on her lips. As if she was saying,  _ Are you still playing with me? _

He would smile for her, when he caught those glances.

Ashivon could feel what the dance was doing to his body. He could feel his muscles growing more toned, his reflexes getting sharper. Even without the Light to fill him with warmth and caring feeling, even without occasional small treats, she was doing good things for him.

He did strut, a little, grinning at her before lining up for the next strike. He needed extra room for her flying kicks.

Every time he saw her, she made him feel good. Better than good. The moments they shared were always the high points of his days.

Twenty feet apart… he felt closer to her than any other being around him. The only friendly face he’d ever seen. The only care he’d ever known. The only love he had to reach for.

Tomorrow, he would be back in the arena, tearing out the flesh of furless that the others of them wanted to see dead. Tomorrow… he might get hurt. That would upset Sanga, he knew.

He would have to try his hardest not to get hurt.

Ashivon tried a few words with her, before she left him. Not that he could communicate that much. “No Ashivon grab hurt,” was not as reassuring as he had hoped it was. He sighed, stretching the knots out of his muscles as the sun set and darkness conquered the sky.

That dance… it was a fight. He had seen Sanga and others use those poses to fight. He could… Could he? The other furless knew she and he spent some time… he guessed that much. Would they react in anger if he… danced?

He hadn’t used the dance in the arena, yet. Ashivon worried that they might connect it to Sanga, and do something to her in revenge. He hoped they wouldn’t care. He hoped they would only care about the deaths he made for them.

Tomorrow… tomorrow, he would test it.

He didn’t even have the words to apologise if the other furless did do anything.

If he needed it, he would use the dance. Keep himself from getting hurt. Anything to give Sanga more reasons to smile. He fell asleep thinking of her smile, and woke to the drudgery of hunger and waiting for the sun to climb a certain amount in the sky. He sharpened his claws and itched his horns, though he was needing to do the latter less and less.

They came as they always came, with weapons bared and ready to beat him down. Ashivon sat and presented his hands as ordered. Let them haul him around with gloved hands towards the arena. The same routine. The same arena. The same kind of furless in there with him. The same roaring of the crowd. The same blood and self-hatred at the end of the day.

He was right, he did need the dance. The furless they put in the arena with him were getting… stronger. They knew how to fight. Well. They knew how to inflict pain.

He didn’t let them.

He dodged a thrust weapon and on reflex lashed out, turning the punch into clawing at their middle in the last instant. Blood and innards spilled. The furless fell and the crowds roared. More importantly, their blade hadn’t landed in his flesh. He watched the guards with the glowing sticks. They didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

The next furless came. They had a long pole arm. A blade fixed to the end of their staff. They were a different hue to the furless he usually saw. They murmured something in another tongue and stood ready for battle.

They were fast. He was faster. They fought well. He fought better. Ashivon had to employ his horns to get in a finishing blow, nicking an artery at their throat, but he won. Barely.

The third was a big brute almost equal to Ashivon in height but more than twice his width in muscle. He had metal on his fingers. Scars up and down his exposed flesh.

That fight took too long. Wore them both out. Was full of near misses. Ashivon knew that if  _ this _ furless managed to land a blow, he might well die. It was a near thing. Too near. He could barely stand when that giant fell for the last time.

Exhausted and bloody, but not hurt. Ashivon let them take him away. Let them douse him with cold water. Let them haul him around like they negligently carted about their dead. Let them dump him, like they dumped the dead in the halls, into his cell.

He’d done it. He had danced and he’d won.

 

* * *

 

He was in the same pile he’d fallen into, when Sanga found him. The night was fresh and the stars were new and she had a basket of special treats allegedly for one of the Cynosures of the Church, but actually for Ashivon. It was easy to lie to the lower-downs. They didn’t dare ask and check. They just bowed to the headscarf and cringed away from the tattoos.

She hardly needed an excuse, but she gave one anyway. It just… it seemed better to do so.

Now she had a basket full of rich, fortifying food and a bottle of dark ale. Things given to build up a person’s strength. Nothing that could harm him, for sure. He needed a decent reward after a day like today.

“Ashivon?”

He barely stirred. When he moved, his muscles trembled. He’d been used hard, and needed more than decent food. He needed a good bed and a rub-down, or he’d be all knots by the morrow. They wouldn’t help him, they’d just beat him. The ignorant bastards.

The ale might help, at least. Help relax his muscles and perhaps prevent them corking overnight. She’d give that to him last. Let him have a good meal in company he appreciated. First, he deserved pie. Hot, thick, rich food.

She didn’t need to tell him to eat. He fell on it, faltering only a little as gravy spilled from the inside.

“Good,” he said. “Big good.” His teeth flashed as he chewed. His purr, always the best of his delights, sounded out across the silent courtyard.

Sanga didn’t know she was playing with his tail until she looked. He didn’t seem to notice, either. She said,  _ “Ashivon do big good,” _ in his own words, and,  _ “Sanga big happy.” _

That was when he noticed. When he startled and touched the bars. Briefly. A little longer. A hold. “No hurt.”

Of course not. He was too big to even try and wriggle out between them, any more. Or maybe they judged him to be tame enough to trust near the bars. It didn’t matter. All that mattered to her right now was that they could touch.

His fur was so soft. So smooth. So warm. As her mouth drifted towards his, she noted how he smelled of sunshine and hot sand and a peculiar hint of spice from a distant land.

Their lips barely touched, like the fluttering of a moth’s wing.

For an instant, just an instant, the bars didn’t matter. The Church didn’t matter. The cage, the arena, the citizens, the capital… they all ceased to exist.

_ ZZAK! _

A blinding flash of light, a stab of searing pain, and they were both thrown away from the bars with a force like a giant’s fist. Sanga pushed herself halfway up, one hand cradling the zinging ache in her face. She found Ashivon in his cage, also halfway up, looking for her. Also cradling his face. This had been one of the Church’s traps, to prevent Barriers from getting too familiar with their Tormentors, or to prevent Tormentors from entertaining any escape plan, or both. 

It was laugh or cry, in that moment. Howl about it all, one way or another.

Ashivon laughed first, Sanga wasn’t far behind, tears leaking from both of them as they tremblingly crawled back towards the basket and resolutely refrained from going too close to the bars again.

She would dream about that one little moment for two months. Night after night.  _ And so would he. _

In the meantime, she could feed him, and teach him a new word, “Ale.”

He must have liked ale. He drank two thirds of the bottle, and she managed to sink the other third. Numbness brought by liquor was preferable to the daily pains of a life like this.

Sanga’s path back to her cell was a little on the unsteady side. Sisters weren’t supposed to drink more than sweetened water or watered-down wine. She wasn’t used to dark ale and it showed. Tomorrow… tomorrow was going to be painful.


	11. Chapter 11

The light hurt, so he turned his eyes away from it. He still needed the warmth of the light, so his back did all of the work of soaking it up. Ashivon’s head hurt. His horns hurt. His _hair_ hurt. Every follicle of fur on his skin ached.

The ale, while nice for the night, had made him sick.

Sanga had drank it, too. Passing the bottle between the bars as they took turns emptying it. She thought it was a treat. She didn’t know it was poison. She had to be sick, too. A small part of him wished they could be sick together. Curled up on a soft pallet, somewhere, with kind people to see to their hurts.

That was a nice daydream.

The reality was the handlers and the glowing sticks and pain. When the pot came with its contents, he retched. Right there where he was huddled in the sunshine. Curling up and coughing and burping at the smell. Ashivon wanted to throw up everything he had ever eaten since his arrival in this place, but that was out of his reach.

The hot coal sensation of a glowing stick pressed into his back, and his own involuntary howl felt like it split his head. He rolled into the darkness and whimpered, still retching, and wished he was dead. Death would be so much more merciful than the agony and torture he was enduring now.

_“Something’swrongwithit.”_ A voice, too loud and sharp in Ashivon’s ears. _“Fetchthebook.”_

There were two with glowing sticks inside his cage. Ashivon winced against the light, but stayed down. He knew the routine. He would eat, they would fight. Only the best fighters amongst them would ever enter to battle, and they would only do so once they passed stringent tests from the other furless.

Once they beat him into submission, they would leave, and Sanga would come to heal his hurts. But he was already down. They didn’t know what to do.

He liked that state of affairs. He could like it more if he wasn’t so pained.

At least the cool of the stone under his aching head was soothing. If only minimally so. Ashivon arranged himself so he could see the furless inside and outside of his cell. He had to do so between his lashes, since the light hurt him so much.

They didn’t do very much. The one in the gloves was peering at him through the small hole in the bars. _“IfIdidn’tknowbetter…”_ he mumbled. _“I’dswearithadahangover.”_

 

* * *

 

Good news, the apothecarium had a hangover cure. It was a mixture of honey, salt, water, and some juices to disguise the taste of salted honey.

Bad news, it was strictly regulated and one had to sign one’s name to withdraw a bottle from the stores.

Great news - Sanga could acquire each and every one of the ingredients without question. Her time in the potioneers had taught her everything she needed to know, and her time everywhere else had taught her all about the places where nobody went. Some of them were mercifully dark and quiet. She had two bottles each for them both. More likely to be one for her and three for him.

Terrible news - The handlers were still messing about with Ashivon. They’d come across problems with the morning feed and by the looks of things, Trainer Vaas was consulting the book of demons.

Damn them. Damn it all. Sanga knew the book of demons didn’t have any medicinal information in it. Just passages about demon growth stages and signs of maturity. She had to help Ashivon, and do it without calling to attention the fact that ‘someone’ (her) had given him dark ale. She had to cure their hangovers whilst making it look like some form of divine inspiration, and then she had to turn away or swoon or otherwise distract them from beating him. If she was lucky.

She had to be creative. She had to be explainable. She had to operate within the rules and beliefs of the Church. She had to wriggle around every barrier, both physical and metaphysical, with style and grace… and a splitting head.

Sanga ducked back into hiding. Trainer Vaas and his Handler trainees would be focussing on Ashivon. That would be good. She needed… She needed Divine Intervention.

She smiled to herself and opened up to the song and the light. Not directing it, just keeping the song inside her. It sufficed to obscure most of her vision, what with the headache doing part of that job already. Therefore it was no stretch for her to be walking as if asleep, apparently in a trance.

The trick was keeping her face calm and lax as she approached the bars. The song of the Divine -or whatever it really was- fighting with the pain of her head.

“Barrier Sanga! What are you—?”

Now. Dreamy. Half a murmur. Monotone, as if asleep. “My charge is ill, I feel its pains. I must cure it.” She could see from the corners of her vision, and those two bars _there_ were just wide enough for her to squeeze through. “The light is with me, I will not be harmed.”

The light and the headache both obfuscated her view of Trainer Vaas as she side-stepped through the correct gap in the bars. A patient breath out, a little wriggle, and she was through.

“I must cure my charge.” The basket she had with her required a little extra tug to get through, and the bottles clinked. She knelt by him, song loud inside her and head fit to crack open. She put the light into her hands so she could touch Ashivon without needing gloves. Sanga intended the Light to heal, but she still caught little wisps of smoke. She put it out whenever and wherever she made contact.

“...sang… ga?”

She took a swig from one of her bottles, wiped it with her shirt, and helped him drink. They did like sweet things, and after a moment’s confusion, he drank. Her swig was working, too. As long as the others saw the Light in her hands, they could well be safe.

Ashivon was smart. He pretended not knowing what bottles were for until she showed him, thus making sure she got her dose, too. As her vision cleared, she saw his face echoing her ‘entranced’ affect. Sitting opposite her. Mirroring her motions. Acting like he was under a spell.

Once the last swig was taken from the last bottle, Sanga pretended to waver.

“Get her out! Get her out!”

Ashivon still looked entranced as she ‘swooned’. Waiting there where she had treated him. Waiting until all was back to a normal that the others could deal with.

They weren’t going to beat him… not more than usual. Sanga let them carry her away to the hospice, where she lay ‘insensate’ for a good hour before she ‘woke up.’

By then, she had a story. The Saint spoke to her, she would claim. The workings of the Church were in peril, and there was great need. Then she felt the love and light of the Divine, and she knew no more.

She had ‘lost’ a total of five hours. Five being the Divine number. Sanga knew how to salt her narrative with the right kind of balderdash. Not too much of it. Just enough to make the experts in such things point and murmur knowingly to each other.

The Church was overdue a good purging. The odd miracle might temper that for a handful of years.

_She didn’t know she had less than three._

 

* * *

 

 

They actually left him alone for the rest of that day. The meals came on schedule, but the beatings did not. Ashivon had seen how the one in the white gloves had frantically paged through his book, searching for knowledge. If they had more books, he could well be elbows-deep in them, scouring every page of every one for a hint of what had happened.

Following Sanga’s lead had been easy. He knew she’d been working some kind of trick on them. Something they couldn’t deny, if their shocked faces were any testimony. The first thing he did after they left was to throw the empty bottles down onto the stones of the courtyard, smashing them into millions of pieces. Whatever had been in them had been something that this place had ready.

Whatever it was, could not have an ordinary explanation. When they came again, to bail him into a corner with their glowing sticks, all they would find would be shattered shards, and not even a ghost of a scent to give them a clue.

Tomorrow… things would be back to the usual routine. He knew it. Tomorrow, the ‘stew’ would be fresh and the beating expected. They were getting better at anticipating his movements. If he wanted to harm them, he’d have to make it a surprise attack.

If he never saw any more of their ale again, it would be too soon.

Stiff, sore, and more than a little aching in the head despite Sanga’s cure, Ashivon ran himself through the movements Sanga had shown him. One, two, three, four… Back and forth across his cell. Pretending she was there in the courtyard, playing with him.

Tomorrow, she would be back. Tomorrow, she would have little treats. Tomorrow… she might be able to touch him again without whatever that subterfuge was with her light. Her light had made the smoke, but… it hadn’t hurt. Not as much as theirs.

She never wanted to hurt him. He never wanted to hurt her.

He wanted far, far more than that. Yet he had no idea how to accomplish it in this place.

* * *

Sanga could be proud of Ashivon. In the moments she had free to supervise the arenas, every Sabaday, she could see him using more and more of the Holy Hand fighting style. It was the way of battle preferred by the Saint, if the stories could be believed. With this, the Church had conquered multitudes, though they consolidated their power into five major cities, with satellites changing according to the whims of outside and, of course, malevolent forces.

The light of the Church spread far and wide, they said. Even barbarians in the distant forsaken wilderness had heard of the Church. Sanga had to wonder how forsaken those barbarian lands could be if the barbarians were living in them, but that was another question she knew she wasn’t allowed to ask.

Sanga found a map of the world, in one of the higher order rooms. She had been sent for their garbage, but she found herself staring at the world. The Church and the Capital were in the centre, of course, and spreading out like rays of the sun were arms of the Church’s light, rendered in gold. They touched the five Major Cities, they touched some outlying lands. Their orientation changed from blessing to entreating when they reached foreign soil, and the colour changed from the blessed and holy red to what should have been a forbidding and untamed green.

Beyond the places full of names Sanga couldn’t try to pronounce, were unmapped territories. The cartographers had filled the empty spaces with monsters. _Here, there be dragons…_

They said the Saint had ventured into those distant lands, trod that foreign soil, and come back with the secrets of the Divine. They said she lived for three times five-score years, until the Church was established and the Divine called her away.

They said so much. Sanga had to wonder if there was any seed of truth left behind all their words.

Nevertheless, she committed the map to her memory, and gathered the bones (but meat meant killing, and killing was wrong) and peels and refuse of the room, and took them away to the middens. Nothing more than a good little cog in the greater machine of the Church, that took in sinners and purified them, and gave so many incentive to remain pure. If she could get away, if she could get _Ashivon_ away…

Such thought was heresy. Nothing and nobody escaped the Church. Nothing and nobody escaped their reach.The wicked were doomed to suffer and the good were doomed to watch it until they, too, became wicked.

The bones shorn clear of flesh by some Cynosure quickly became lost in the Church’s midden heap, where those too simple to rent out as help endlessly churned the piles until they became soil, and sold the soil to the farmers and gardeners of the Capital and the Captial’s surrounds.

They’d even sell their own shit if they could make some gold out of it…

Sanga washed her hands of that matter and found herself dragged into the Hospice, where several Defenders were trying to hold down a bulky man who did not want his leg cut off. It was gangrenous and festering, but he still insisted that it would improve with the right plaster. Just use a plaster, _please,_ for the love of the Saint and the light!

They needed her to work the Divine Dream.

Only those powerful in the Divine, the strong Shunts, could do it. Sanga stood in the man’s line of sight and clapped her hands together. Fingertips to the sky, fingers to her mouth. She breathed slowly in, bringing the song into her heart. Pointing her fingers towards the man, she opened her glowing palms like a book and blew the light towards him.

He went down like a sack of mud. The Defenders let him go. Sanga, song still zinging in her heart and mind, said, “I’ll keep him under, you do the work.” She got around to his head. One hand on his brow, one on his chest, focussing on keeping him dreaming of pleasant things.

The instant the grizzly work was done, she hit him with a bolt of healing power, closing the wound before it, too, could get infected.

She let the light go and felt as weak as a kitten. She was standing face-to-face with Dridl, that ass, who had apparently made Defender.

“I heard about your miracle,” he said. “I was wondering how it was done. Did you use the Dream on yourself?”

“It’s impossible for the ordained to use the Divine Light on themselves,” she said. “Everyone knows that.”

He glared at her.

“One would have to be a complete idiot to believe that the Light can be turned inward like that,” Sanga added with mock sweetness. “The light always shines outwards from its source. It never goes back in. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” he echoed. “So someone else must have used the Dream on you.”

Good gods, he had a mind like a pretzel. All twisted up and knotted around itself. If anyone was going to be a Grand Inquisitor, it was going to be Dridl, the ass. Therefore, Sanga had to be very, very careful around him.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Sanga. “I don’t remember a thing.”

“Hm,” he said. “Those who’ve experienced the Dream always remember pleasant things. Childhood comforts, moments of joy and wonder… a feeling of supreme love and safety… that sort of thing.”

“Yes,” said Sanga. “They do.” She felt like she wanted to be carried out of the hospice. Or carried further into it where she could have a nice nap. “Also, the practitioner needs to maintain contact with the patient. We all know this.” She tried to make it into the halls, and almost fell. Her bones were like wet paper. “Excuse me, Brother. The work was taxing.”

He didn’t hound her, so that was a bonus. Sanga had no idea how she made it to the courtyard or to the column just next to Ashivon’s cage. Once there, though, she slid down the column into a sort of heap and wept like a small child, shaking from head to toe.

It wasn’t just the strenuous use of the Light, though that was a contributing factor. It wasn’t just that she constantly had to be on watch every waking moment, though that didn’t help either. It wasn’t even the crushing loneliness that her knowledge obligated her to suffer. It was the fact that she knew that she couldn’t do anything more than being excruciatingly careful for the rest of her days, without fail, without rest, without help… or else.

The Church was going to kill them.


	12. Chapter 12

Sanga was crying. Shaking. She was upset. Three facts and the things that it would have been right to do were out of his reach. He could not scoop her up and take her somewhere soft. He could not wrap himself around her and give her the comforts she clearly needed.

The bars didn’t let him hold or touch them for long. He couldn’t even place a hand on her shoulder. That was too much of his flesh beyond the bars for the furless’ liking.

Ashivon huddled close to her. Leaning against the wall. As close to the bars as he could get without actually touching them. He forced a purr from his throat. Snaked his tail between the bars and curled it around her. Found her skin by feel and brushed her with his tuft.

He hadn’t wept for himself in years. Those tears were all run out. That well was dry. He surprised himself with the fact that he could weep for Sanga. These were her people. This was her place… but it was so relentlessly cruel that it hurt her soul to live here.

When she hurt, he hurt too.

He let her tangle her hands in his fluff, let her twist his tail about as she bawled. The discomfort on his part was small compared to the agony in his heart. Especially the pain caused by knowing that all he could to was sit there and let her cry, shake, and turn his tail into knots.

His purr faltered. He just couldn’t keep it going for her, no matter how hard he tried. Sanga deserved his purr. She deserved safety. She deserved a family who loved her and every security. She deserved happiness. She deserved laughter. She deserved greenery. She deserved peace. She deserved everything.

Everything that was beyond both their reaches, she deserved. If she got it at the price of him never seeing her again… he could endure it if he knew she was happy. Obviously, he’d prefer to be in that figment of a dreamland, himself. It was an unlikely fantasy, he knew it, but he couldn’t stay away from it.

A little house, far from everywhere, with a garden for her fruit and vegetables, and a small forest nearby so he could get his meat. He could cook it separately, so Sanga didn’t have to touch it. He had never smelled a hint of meat in her breath. She and the furless ate nothing but vegetables.

It was a nice daydream. Impossible, of course, but nice nevertheless. When there was nothing else to do, he would close his eyes and be there. With her, working on the garden. With her, tending to animals. With her, cooking food on the hearth…

Never alone, never lonely, ever again.

It was a very nice daydream.

Sanga shuddered to a halt, sighing and running her soothing light along his tail, untangling his fluff with her fingers. He turned to face her, then, reclaiming some of his tail and keeping watch out for any unwanted audience. He didn’t need to, not really. Hardly anyone came into this courtyard but the Furless who trained in it, and Sanga. He still watched, just in case some furless decided to try and catch them for whatever reasons.

Ashivon didn’t understand why the furless did anything, ever. His lot was to wait and suffer and kill for them every seventh day. Sanga’s lot was to be busy and watch it all and heal him when he was injured. She could have easily been like the rest, but she chose to be different.

“Sanga want… out,” he said. “Ashivon want out. No out.”

She nodded, letting him have his tail back. “No out.”

 

* * *

 

The Church was overdue a purge. Everyone was saying so. Whispered in corners. Murmured between friends. Stated as a matter of fact between people queueing for their meals. The Church is overdue for a purge. There’s sin in every corner. They’ll be purging it soon.

Sanga tried to keep her heart steady, for all that it wanted to ricochet around in her chest. She agreed with a calm smile because of course, _of course,_ the pious and the ordained had nothing to fear from a purge. It was the _sinners_ who were afraid.

So very many of her peers were assured that they were going to be spared the torments of the purge. They were looking forward to watching the sinners being purified.

It made Sanga more than a little nauseated to think about. It wasn’t about finding sinners and taking them out of the equation. It was about finding those who weren’t pious _enough_ and torturing them until they confessed to enough sins.

Then they would be thrown to Ashivon. Sinners were always thrown to the demons so their last moments were a sneak preview of hell… and so those who had avoided the Church’s attentions could cheer and feel superior. There’d be so many of them that choice cuts would be excised from their bodies for Ashivon’s meals.

She could not say things like, _I don’t like to watch any creature suffer,_ because the sinners deserved it. Murderers deserved it. She could not say, _That demon has feelings and doesn’t want to kill,_ because he had been taught from his first day to hate Humankind. It was a miracle he even liked her. It would be so easy for him to hate her and she… she would understand.

She could especially not say, _This Church is rotten to the core and it needs to purge itself,_ because that was flat-out heresy and got people burned at the stake.

Everyone was watching everyone else. Looking for signs of corruption in their fellows and peers. Watching and judging. Sanga was certain they were all thinking, _Are they more pious than me? Are they less? What could it benefit me to talk about how less pious someone is?_ Mostly because she was thinking similar thoughts herself. Well. Not the bit about calculating the worth of tattling on someone else.

It was difficult for her to figure out exactly which qualities the Church valued above others. The entire process seemed more arbitrary than logical to Sanga. She knew the rules according to the Holy Writ, and they were mostly self-contradictory. For every virtue, there was an equal and opposite sin. The best she could manage was what everyone else did, back up their decisions with the relevant pieces of scripture that also happened to be popular amongst the common populace.

_The Church was overdue a purge… It was coming…_

The air around her was thick with tension. A thunderstorm about break. A volcano about to erupt. A paper bag about to rupture. _A bloated corpse about to burst…_

There would be a reign of terror, of the corrupt seeking out corruption. There would be a battle among the powerful for even more power as those underneath them fought to maintain their internally-conflicting rules with increasing desperation, until few of the truly pure were left, and only the truly wicked could maintain the veneer of piety.

Every time it happened, they declared it a great victory for the Divine, for the gods, for the Saint. Every time it happened, there was less that was tolerated amongst the faithful. Sanga doubted that even the Saint would be tolerated, should she walk into the Church of today.

_The purge is overdue…_

She found her appetite lacking, and selected only a few things to eat. Things that would maintain her health and sit easily on her roiling stomach. Only Ashivon, kept eternally hungry, and ignorant of the Church’s internal politics, could have an appetite in these days.

All she had to do was keep going. Keep a veneer of innocence and piety about her like a shield, keep the relevant sections of scripture in mind in case anyone interrogated her about her reasons. Keep on guard at every waking hour. All of that. For one more day.

Until she could sleep.

Until she could rest.

Until she had to do it again the next morning.

Day… after day… after day… until the purge commenced and she was either victorious or a victim.

 

* * *

 

 

They had more and more furless to kill. Ashivon had to wonder if there would be any left by the time he became an Elder. They kept them coming. Male. Female. Broad. Thin. All with weapons. All facing him down in a fight.

They couldn’t touch him any more, not since he started using Sanga’s fighting poses. He could duck or dodge any strike, strike back at them with claws, hands, or feet. Take them down quickly.

He lost count of the bodies that the other furless, the ones with the scarves and marks like Sanga’s, removed from the arena. He lost count of the deaths he had caused. All that mattered was the roar of the crowd.

He took out the latest one with a kick to his neck. Roared back at the roaring crowd and the sky just for the joy of it. Somewhere, Sanga would be proud. He could feel it. All that fighting and not a mark on him. That was her doing. Her teaching. He was her accomplishment.

Ashivon caught his breath, still grinning. Turning to face the doors and the next fighter. That was when his mood dropped like a stone.

They were small, clad in a simple, loose, long-sleeved dress that came to their knees. Short-haired and bruised so recently that the swelling had not gone down. They were weeping, holding a broken bottle by its neck in one shaking hand.

Ashivon froze. That was a child. They had told him repeatedly, insisted, that he never harm a child. He told all the little ones who came to see him, “No eat child.” And, in fact, those words slid from his mouth without his will behind them. It was automatic, like swatting at a fly or turning in sleep.

The child stayed, shivering, where they’d stopped after someone shoved them through. Above them both, the crowd started to boo and hiss. Ashivon said it on purpose this time, “No eat child.” Louder. “No eat child!”

He backed away from the little one, showing his palms. “No eat child.” He backed into burning pain. The furless who held him and hauled him around were back, blocking off his retreat. Yelling at him.

“No eat child!”

One of them hit him. He almost lashed out, but remembered in time that there were always more furless with glowing sticks. They could overwhelm him. They could bludgeon him into insensitivity. One of them did… something…  and the mark on his arm pulsed like it hadn’t pulsed in years. The anger rose as the furless took turns hitting him and the roar of the crowd filled his ears and hunger gnawed at him.

Ashivon went to his knees, forcing himself to grip the ground and stay still. He kept repeating, “No eat child!” as the blows rained down on him. The scent of his own blood and the anger and the gnawing, biting, insidious hunger filled his senses.

He screamed the words. “NO EAT CHILD!” and the throbbing of the mark began to eat his brain.

That was a child. Don’t eat the child.

No!

Sand under his claws. Pain in his back. Sand in his mouth. Someone stepped on his tail.

_Eat._

NO!

Hungry, so hungry, why did they always make him so hungry? The food was right--

NO!

_EAT!_

Blood blood tasty blood tasty flesh so hungry so very hungry meat living meat right there so easy…

_NO!_

No eat child. No eat child no eat child no eat child noeatchild noeatchild noeatchildnoeatchildno... no… no no no... no…

_Eat child._

 

* * *

 

The Testing had ended early. That meant Ashivon was dead or dying or injured. She was needed. Sanga marched through the halls of the purified, glancing at the bodies of former sinners, tossed into the holding areas like garbage.

_They were garbage, according to the Church. Murderers were no longer human, but demons in human form._

The stench of death filled these halls, clung to them like a baby clings to its mother.

She tried not to look, but she looked anyway, at Sister Aeryn and Brother Dridl -that ass- hauling a small body towards the heaps. The last victim of the day.

_A child…_

Oh no. Sanga steeled herself. Ashivon was likely to be distraught. Injured for certain, and not by that little scrap. A tiny little child, torn open at the neck.

_He hadn’t cut anyone open for years…_

Something had to be wrong. Something had gone very, very wrong. She saw him the instant that thought crossed her head. Dragged between two guards by his elbows. Barely conscious.

Barely alive.

She heard him, all the same. Slurred, exhausted, yet imparting something important to him all the same. “...no… eat… child…”

He was covered in his blood. He was stained with that child’s blood. They’d done something to him beyond beating him, she knew. Something…

_Unholy._

The light and the song filled her like they’d never filled her before. “We taught him not to hurt children. This entire Church taught him not to harm children! Now you beat him like an obstinate jackass because he’s done what he’s told?”

The magic flowed. Flooded. Sanga poured all the love she had in her into him, and barely noticed when that light lifted him up so that he was sitting once more. Like he should be, before they rudely washed the blood off him.

An involuntary noise of pure delight escaped him. His ragged breaths became regular. Even the stain of blood was erased from his fur by the light.

“No. Eat. Child.” He slumped forwards, almost touching her.

She let the light fade, feeling weakened, and touched her forehead to his. “I know, I know... Ssh… I know. I know.”

“No eat child,” he whispered.

“Yes. Good. No eat child,” she agreed. She could feel his hands, wanting to hold her. Fearful to try. Her hands found his arms.

_Where there is sorrow, I will comfort…_

His fur was soft, like a fine velvet, she could feel the muscles underneath move as he moved to hold her. She could feel him tremble as they drew close. Felt him nuzzle into her neck as a raw sob escaped him. She held him tight, her cheek against his shoulder. Her eyes shut to a cruel world.

For a moment, just a moment, it was just the two of them. Holding each other in a chaste embrace. Both needing each other. Both grasping tight to the only small comfort they knew. For a moment, just a moment, everything was _right._

Then everything went wrong.

The light whips bound him, dragged him backwards, shut his mouth from speaking.

“Wait! No! He needs--” Sanga got no further.

Strong arms caught her in a headlock. A sharp pain whipped across her chest and the light Sanga was trying to summon jarred her every nerve. If she cried out, she didn’t remember. What she did remember was Dridl, that ass, saying something self-important and with a veneer of righteousness.

“We all knew your bastard heritage would lead to sin, ‘sister’.”

The purge, long overdue, had begun.


	13. Chapter 13

Ashivon tried to scream as the furless cut Sanga. Tried to fight the burning bonds. Tried to struggle. All to no avail. He could withstand the pain, but the thing that hurt him most was seeing her limp, like a puppet with its strings cut, between the other furless as they dragged her and him through the corridors.

The furless were angry, he could sense that, but the one who had cut Sanga was angry  _ and smiling. _ As if he’d won a victory.

They held him in their glowing symbol, leaned him against a stone with a convenient notch for his jaw, and tied him down with so many ropes of light that he wondered if they’d left any light in the world.

There were running feet, and shouting voices, and he could see Sanga gain some of her strength back. She looked truly drained. Worse than exhausted. She looked… defeated. Tears welled in her eyes. Blood welled and trickled down her chest. Someone had taken her hat, and she looked worse than naked without it.

He called her name, fighting the bonds.

_ “I’msorry,” _ she said. She noticed someone entering the room. A female furless in a black hood that covered the top half of her face and all of her hair.  _ “SisterBuana. I seeyou’vefoundacalling.” _

The one in the black mask said,  _ “Shutup, you’renext,” _ and continued on her path. She picked up a thick, black stick and made her symbols glow. There, on one end, was a glowing axe head.

This was a chopping block. He was going to die. He was going to be executed.

There were furless up in a high gallery. Expensive furless, with robes of gold and rich colours and sparkling jewels. They were in love with talking and Ashivon didn’t mind that bit so much. Any minute more was a minute he didn’t expect to have.

Then he saw the baby.

_ It is a long-standing tradition in the Church to allow the new Tormentor to see the Saint, and then see the previous Tormentor. Usually, they make certain that the old Tormentor is dead but, as is evident, things were more than a little rushed. _

This little one was no more than seven, certainly no younger than five. His coat was a stark pattern of midnight black and snowy white. His ears were white, as were his hands, and the ears had darling little black points.

The poor boy had no idea what was going on. Ashivon had to warn him.

_ It was at that moment, that Ashivon realised that he hardly had any of his people’s words any more. He had very few of them left. _

“Baby,” he shouted in his own tongue. “Run! They hurt! They kill! No trusting! Run! Fight! Now!” All the horrors of his life in this place made him use all his strength against the bonds. He could feel them cutting as they burned. He could feel his blood starting to pour. “Run, baby! RUN! RUN NOW!”

The furless were coming to attack him. The one with the glowing axe paused, about to strike.

Others were making their marks glow. They had forgotten about Sanga! So had he.

A blur of tan and red and black hair. A kick higher than it ever should have been because she had trained in arenas made for taller people. The axe flew up… still glowing. How long could it last?

The baby hadn’t run. He was tentatively coming in to get a closer look at Ashivon. He didn’t even have the words to tell this child that he was about to die. “Run,” he said. “Run, run!”

The axe could last long enough for Sanga to catch it out of the air and bring the fading blade down on glowing rope and sigil, shattering both, before it became an ordinary stick again.

Ashivon pounced on the nearest threat, clawing her major arteries. Sanga used the stick against a glowing one, blocking every attack and getting more than a few blows in herself. One left amongst those attacking. Trying to get the advantage over Sanga by sneaking up behind her. He pounced, dealing with them in short order.

Beyond this room, out in the hallway was bedlam, chaos, and disorder. Furless were running in all directions and the baby was even closer. He was scared. He wanted his mother. Ashivon knew this. He had once been afraid and wanting his mother, too.

Burned and bleeding, he did his best to present a friendly face. Crouching down to his eye level and offering an open palm.

_ “Why’d they hurt you, mister?” _ The child asked.

Ashivon barely understood. He didn’t have his own words any more. He could only shrug.

A little white hand found his. This child was so soft. He deserved to remain so.

“Ashivon!”

He looked up. The furless had decided to attack. There was nothing else to do but run. He scooped up the baby, reached out for Sanga, and started to run. Up the stairs, past the chopping block, towards the image of the woman with the mark.

He shared a look with Sanga. For an instant, they were of one mind. Smash the window. Get out. Run away.

To that end, she threw the stick at the widow with the image. Glass shattered and they leaped through, not letting go of each other.

Though they landed rough, they were soon underway again. Out beyond the gates, still not letting go. Out through the gardens and into the streets, not letting go. Scaring some people who were out in the night and had no time to respond, not letting go.

They kept not letting go, running together, out and out and out. Out beyond the lights. Out beyond the paved roads. Out beyond any sign of civilisation. Not. Letting. Go.

They came to a halt, at last, in an overgrown ruin concealed in thickets of scrubby, weedy greenery. Concealment enough, safety enough, to stop. To sit. To catch their breaths and let the baby down and realise.

Neither had wanted to let go.

Neither were forced to let go.

Tomorrow would have new problems, but tonight? For the rest of the night, they were free. Free to not let go.

 

END!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone who read this for all your love and support while I was posting this. Thanks especially to the Church Animatic Discord and their tortured screams whenever I ran our babies through the wringer. ISTG, there's something wrong with writer folk...
> 
> I am currently working on a sequel to this thing because nothing was able to stop me. For any news on that, the other pies I have my fingers in, and how to help me pay for tubs of Halo Top, please visit internutter (dot) org. You get fresh daily stories, updates on my life, and links to E-VE-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G I'm working on, have worked on, and might work on again.
> 
> You've been a lovely audience and every single one of you deserves comfort and love.
> 
> Share and enjoy.


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